JUAN DAVIL A GR APH IC !
29 AUGUst – 15 N o VembeR 2009
QC A GALLERY QuEE nsL And CoLLEGE of ARt 226 GREY s tREE t sout H BA nK Q 4101
fRont CoVER IMAGE LICHteNsteIN 1984 SILKSCReeN oN PAPeR 86 x 53 CM eDItIoN UNKNoWN
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FOREWORD SP Wright, director Griffith artworks + QCa Gallery
Griffith Artworks has enjoyed a rare opportunity to
of self-portraiture in which the subject constantly
present GRAPHIC!, a selection of 60 works on paper
facilitates the challenging of a stable, fixed identity.”
get close to the work of Juan Davila and is delighted to covering almost four decades of practice.
The title refers not just to the medium and substrate we elected to examine — drawing and printmaking on paper — but to the vividly descriptive ways by
which Davila and his guises visualise subjects and objects. There is a tension at play in all of Davila’s work, one that often operates at the threshold
slips away from us. In each, a doubling or mimicry Our project, the first solo public gallery exhibition of Davila’s work in Queensland, features early
works previously unseen or rarely exhibited and several major new works such as the epic
A Panorama of Melbourne (2008), a work central to our project.
where seduction and repulsion co-mingle, or cannot
Griffith Artworks thanks Juan Davila for the access
gravitational pull on the viewer we are almost dared
collection of works, all of which are on loan from
exist without each other. It is a tension with such
to look away, as if to reinforce much of what Davila considers at stake in the constant flux of post-
colonial identities, be they national, personal, sexual, indigenous. What is at stake? Apathy, ignorance, jingoism, to begin with.
As Abigail Fitzgibbons argues, “this strategy
can particularly be seen in Davila’s employment
we have been afforded to his personal archive and the artist. I would also like to acknowledge the
support and generosity of Juan Davila’s Australian representative, Kalli Rolfe, a private dealer based in Melbourne who went to great lengths to assist our enquiries, and printer Larry Rawling, whose
collaboration with the artist can be seen amid the dazzling array of silkscreen editions on display.
of alternative signatures, styles, motifs and
We are especially grateful to Abigail Fitzgibbons
development of personas or protagonists drawn
her first project at Griffith Artworks.
compositions by other artists; in his characteristic from history, myth, art history and popular culture; and in his fascination with an unconventional form
for her research and contribution to this catalogue,
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A PANORAMA OF MELBOURNE 2008 S i l kS c r e e n o n pa p e r 100 x 1200 cm edition of 2
By juan davila Our notion of what is familiar shifts and evolves as does our city.
Violence characterizes the beginnings of Melbourne. The ’mia-mia’ of the indigenous cultures were confronted by the technology of
the newcomers with their tent cities. After the discovery of gold, C
Melbourne emerged as an English Victorian pastiche or catalogue of styles. Here, architecture acquired the feeling of a prison ward, complicit with authoritarian government. The architecture of the
State had then, as now, few links to nature, little consultation with
the citizens, eroding the line between the country and the city and condemning people to nostalgic slums. Today the urban space still
isolates and alienates. The city dominated by technology was once a
science fiction nightmare, but is a reality today. People are controlled, spied upon, dependent on the Internet, IPods, cellular phones and
credit cards. The State promotes a virtual space in detriment of the living one. Our city is a clone of others; the historical centre is a
shopping mall, surrounded by pay freeways and the suburban slums, dormitories lacking any support facilities. Both Liberal and Labor
governments have embraced the developer’s dream: a car-centric, inefficient, horizontal suburban model that does not allow for F
climate change. This materialism denies nature with its unstoppable and self-righteous drive. The desolate megalopolis could be made
liveable and humanized responding to human needs; light, air, views, sociability. It could be a flexible and adaptable architecture — not our current featurism — as a network of adaptable elements. The
recurrent predilection towards regressive nostalgia could give way
to an aesthetic act of urban design, making this a political question. We are trapped with a system that does not deal with exceptional
principles but with banality and commonplace. The social order and its master discourse today enforce submission to common news, foreclosure to shifting meanings, and obsession with utilitarian knowledge, numbers and the limiting horizon of capitalism
and science. Within this ordinary psychotic culture citizens are
commanded to Enjoy, with their sexual meaning transformed into
social meaning: commonsense and consumerism. The city we have i
today corresponds to this violence.
EL EctiON 2 0 0 1 SilkSCREEn on PaPER 121 x 80 Cm Edi t i on 6
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. . . the wandering self is polymorphous. for to cross boundaries means a change in state. itinerancy leads to renunciation of sedentary habits binding the subject to a fixed morality or truth. by breaking out of this mould, the subject becomes a transient in identity.
1
JUAN D Avi LA: identity and mimicry
By abigail Fitzgibbons
At over 12 metres in length, A Panorama of
For an artist renowned for an aesthetic that is
and ambitious works. Created with the assistance
the seamless historical format of the panorama
Melbourne 2008 is one of Juan Davila’s most recent of printmaker Larry Rawling, it draws on a period
of residency at the State Library of Victoria where
Davila poured over visual and archival records of his
often libidinal, controversial and disjunctive,
might seem an odd choice. A popular art form in the nineteenth century, the panorama as a form of viewing the world embodies the precepts of
adopted city of Melbourne, from colonial times to the
modernism. Intended to capture and provide an
in time, with movement through space of primary
imply values of prosperity and progress. They are
references to colonial, art historical and other sources,
of great cities seen from (an often imaginary)
history, tracking the symbolic passage of Melbourne
and visual) were removed to provide a single and
present.2 Panoramas generally show a fixed moment concern. Davila’s panorama, with its many erudite
instead moves diachronically through time and
as a site for original occupants, to an introduced
tented establishment, and ultimately to the surreal and Lichtenstein-esque architecture of Federation
Square. It concludes with an imaginary projection of the future city.
overview of a growing city, panoramas necessarily also homogenizing, offering “convincing illusions
central vantage-point”.3 Discordant elements (social
very partial perspective. Thus the panorama both makes the city legible and constructs a coherent
identity for it. It is these very characteristics that
Davila’s practice is articulated against.
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A Panorama of Melbourne mimics the qualities
Davila’s subtle inversion of the values of the
unconventional form of self-portraiture in which
differences. The colonial narrative it follows is
larger practice — that of doubling or mimicry to
doubling or mimicry allows the challenging of a
of the traditional panorama yet contains subtle
panorama here suggest a strategy at play in his
the subject constantly slips away from us. In each,
partial and imaginary. Historical figures such as
undermine a fixed or stable identity.4 Rather than
Melbourne — and William Buckley are accompanied
Bhabha, is a strategy of resistance against (colonial)
Davila’s resistance to fixed meanings and singular
figures who populate the scene, strange rectangular
of the salient features of the person or object being
racial) has been a fundamental concern of his
John Batman — known as the possible founder of
by Davila’s personal friends. Scattered amongst the
and circular shapes dot the composition and appear
slavish imitation, mimicry, as defined by Homi
domination, and implies the exaggerated copying copied in which a “slippage” or “excess” occurs.
stable, fixed identity.
identities (whether sexual, social, authorial or
practice. This concern is played out across the
as apparitions or ruptures in the sky or earth. In
Mimicry is repetition with a difference, often utilizing
various mediums and techniques he employs, from
sky. The work ends with a surreal and imagined
“mimicry conceals no presence or identity behind
to the engagement with Latin American culture,
increasingly bizarre and convoluted. Instead of a
mimicry operates both stylistically and in terms of
the final scenes, a semen-like liquid seeps from the architecture of a future Melbourne which has become straightforward chronological sequence, what is
irony and humour. It is powerful precisely because its mask” and destabilizes the original. For Davila,
subject matter. This strategy can particularly be seen
offered here is a narrative of disjunctive repetitions,
in Davila’s employment of alternative signatures,
assembly of characters and events undermining
in his characteristic development of personas or
presented as uncertain, shifting and unbounded.
and popular culture; and in his fascination with an
vertical movements and displacements with an odd coherence. The identity and history of the city is
styles, motifs and compositions by other artists;
protagonists drawn from history, myth, art history
the early photo-collages, to 1980s appropriation, to the references to narrative history painting
and postcolonial perspectives. It is through the self-portraits and his portrayal of several key
protagonists that the strategy of mimicry emerges
most clearly as a language of resistance.
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Davila’s practice and his working method — that of transvestism. A term developed by Chilean-based critic Nelly Richard, it described an approach
adopted by a group of Chilean artists (including
Davila) working in the 1970s and 80s during the
era of General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. In a
Davila’s 1984 Self-portrait is an early work in which
not as a unitary identity, but as two individuals, or
photographic diptych showing the artist in two
individual. One is unadorned and masculine, the other
doubling and excess transparently occur. It is a
guises: in each black and white image Davila looks
as a split identity showing two aspects of the same
wears heavy make-up like a transparently imperfect
society in which cultural and artistic freedom was
discouraged, these artists utilized the “feminine”
to embody the abject and marginal as a means
of resistance to official discourse. Transvestism’s
subversive potential lay in its implication of a clumsy
mask or disguise. As with the panorama, Davila uses
or excessive copy of an original, exposing the original
end. On the right is a standard studio style portrait;
reveal, but to question and challenge.
for hidden desire and for the liberation of the social
his eyebrows have become thick and heavy, and his
Self-portrait 1984 also draws attention to an aspect
lipstick. Davila has chosen here to represent himself
strategy of mimicry and has been used to define
directly at the camera, his short hair is slicked back and he wears a white singlet. There the similarities
on the left Davila’s eyes are outlined with black kohl,
lips emphasized through the application of dark
the mode of the self-portrait against itself — not to
of his practice that can be seen as part of his larger
as a construct. Thus transvestism became a metaphor self. To appropriate the words of Julia Kristeva, it
stood in for what “disturbs identity, system, order.
What does not respect borders, positions, rules?
The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite”.5
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Davila himself was conscious of this term and its
permutations and continued to see it as relevant to
an abject feminized form while retaining masculine
traits. Yet transvestism, like mimicry, also implies a
his practice. Describing his collaborative partnership
more metaphorical methodology of hybridization and
Interior with Built-in-Bar 1992 — Davila remarked:
hide behind a mask or disguise, or who negotiate two
with artist Howard Arkley — in works such as i see our collaboration as a wonderful travesty.
Howard might not see it in these terms, but we are two transvestite painters, or camp decorators, who have no sense of taste, and we produced an intentionally bastard result. it has the appearance of a proper painting but as you come near the whole thing blurs, like make-up on a transvestite.6
In Davila’s work this strategy of transvestism
sometimes takes a literal form. Many of his signatures
and his protagonists’ names are feminized (‘Juana
Dávila’, ‘Juana Brack’, ‘Maria Davila’, ‘Simona Bolívar’
to mention only a few), and their bodies also take on
disjunction; and a fascination with protagonists who
has been forgotten and he has become associated
with a set of absolute values: national history, the unification of Latin American culture, ideological
truth and masculinity. Bolívar is often represented
in immaculate military garb as a General riding a
apparently opposing worlds. Thus it operates both
white horse, arm raised to lead forward into battle
matter, allowing him to break down the notion of a
figure’ retain these essential features, yet reverse the
at the level of style or working method and subject
unitary self or identity.
In the drawings and prints included in this exhibition, it is possible to see those characters or protagonists
who consistently fascinated him. Davila has created several versions of Símon Bolívar, one of which is
included in the exhibition. Bolívar, otherwise know
or the future. Davila’s conceptions of the ‘heroic
values associated with each item or gesture. In The
Liberator Símon Bolívar, 1994, the military leader
is ‘transvestized’ and made profane — his jacket is
open to reveal feminine breasts, his genitals exposed, and his finger raised not in victory but in a gesture
of obscenity. In other representations, he is given
the features of a ‘mestizo’ or person of mixed race. In
as “The Liberator”, was an important leader in the
The Liberator Símon Bolívar, Bolívar is shown against
revered as a national hero in many South American
kangaroo, while a Nolan-esque Ned Kelly (also with
struggle for independence from Spain, and he is
countries. In the process his identity as an individual
an Australian landscape, replete with gum tree and
female breasts imprinted in his armour) rides below.
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tHE L iBERAtOR siMON BOL ivAR 1994 SilkSCREEn on PaPER 162 x 144 Cm Edi t i on 1 0
or directly drawn from, works by iconic Australian
painters. He appropriates their titles (Lost and Collins
St at 5.01pm), or literally signs the image with their signatures: S T Gill, John Longstaff, William Strutt.
Often these are artists of the colonial era or those quintessentially associated with Melbourne, such
as John Brack (reconfigured as ‘Juana Brack’). He
has also recast historical figures in unexpected
An indication of Bolívar’s importance to many South
This event has since been examined and re-examined
juxtapositions. Captain Cook and explorers Burke
arouse hidden anxieties, was the much recounted
almost essential to an understanding of the General’s
recent Disappointment series features, among others,
American countries, and of Davila’s ability to precisely
within the field of Bolívarian studies, becoming
and Wills have appeared in earlier work, while his
diplomatic incident that occurred when a similar
present day importance.
Hamilton Hume and the figure of William Buckley,
of 500 postcards as part of an art project financed by
As Guy Brett pointed out, the “essence (of Davila’s
tribe for many years and later mediated between
Chilean flag was burnt, and when protests occurred
geographies, histories and discourses to find their
image of Bolívar (by the artist) was printed on a set the Chilean Ministry of Culture. It caused a riot, the outside Chilean embassies in Venezuela, Colombia,
Ecuador and Peru, the Chilean government was
forced to issue a formal apology to these countries.
practice) lies in crossing boundaries between
a colonial Australian who lived with an Aboriginal
them and white settlers. Sometimes these scenes and characters clash with recognizable iconography from
secret links and common problems”.7 Davila has also
Latin American paintings (with figures derived from
In many works he uses compositions reminiscent of,
and Antonio Berni). In Collins Street at 5.01pm 1995,
turned his attention to Australian national identity.
Fernando Botero, Diego Riviera, Tarsila do Amaral
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a literal appropriation of Brack’s title, Davila’s
version of a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo looms
above the sombre faces of Brack’s Melbournian
inhabitants, creating an intentional clash and contradictory concoction.
Bushranger Ned Kelly is one of the historical
figures he has recast in a new context. In a series
from 1986, Kelly reclines naked in the Australian
landscape, adopting the classic posture of female
single-minded explorers traversing an unexplored
Bolívar. Verdejo and the closely related ‘Pobre Diablo’
(poor devil) are both Chilean comic characters.
nudes in Western art. In these images he is devoid
wilderness, the early settlers and the intrepid
shell of his characteristic armour. Davila has
is also an ambiguous, double figure — both hero and
1970s in Chile. He is ‘el roto’, a peculiar Chilean slang
it. In other images, only his mask or armour is
The characters who most embody the principle of
those from the poorest echelons of Chilean society.
As with his portrayal of Símon Bolívar, Davila’s
position of ‘go-betweens’, composite identities who
of that which gives him his identity — the outer seen what is essential to Kelly’s individuality in
the Australian conception of him and removed
present, he has become a faceless, empty signifier.
representations of Kelly expose the emptiness of
those stereotypes our sense of identity as a nation
is built upon — the founding myths of masculine,
adventurers (including bushrangers). Kelly himself
convicted outlaw.
mimicry in Davila’s work are those that occupy the
transgress borders and traverse numerous positions.
Verdejo is a frequent protagonist who, in many ways, is the inverse of the values associated with Símon
Verdejo was very popular from the 1950s to the
term - ‘roto’ (from the verb ‘roter’, to break) signifies
something broken or damaged — but was applied to
Verdejo as a character signified the ‘everyman’.
In Davila’s words: “he is untrustworthy, insolent,
sexually-charged, dirty etc. But he speaks truth and
expresses things with the Chilean humour to well-
known politicians and presidents”.8 Davila’s Verdejo
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drawing) are rare examples of Davila literally using
the work of another artist, rather than citing or appropriating it.
In King Bungaree and Verdejo Visit Melbourne — a
1992/1998 work which leads us back towards the
landscape of A Panorama of Melbourne — Verdejo is shown in the company of an Australian go-between,
is a hybrid identity both sexually, racially, and socially,
satirizing the values of sexual dominance suggested
visiting the surreal architecture of Federation Square.
A lesser-known figure than Ned Kelly, Bungaree
was painted by a variety of colonial artists. Initially
and his abject characteristics enable him to occupy
by this painting. In Verdeja 1996 (a companion
persistence, Verdejo penetrates the closed ranks of
humorously travestied with Verdejo’s base features.
which in turn relies on historical accounts by white
defaces an eighteenth century engraving by a French
‘king’) was said to be the leader of a group of Broken
multiple territories. Through humour, cunning and Chilean society and exposes its darkest secrets. In Davila’s work, Verdejo sometimes becomes
‘Verdeja’ or ‘El rota’, a feminized, transvestized figure who asserts a presence in the most inappropriate situations. In La Perla del Mercader 1996 his face
takes the place of the merchant’s beautiful slave in
Valenzuela Puelma’s classic work of the same name,
piece to The Liberator Símon Bolívar) Bolívar is
In Let us oppress the poor 1997, Verdejo literally
artist, his ludicrous larger-than-life face appended
to the original print. Similarly Pobre Diablo inserts
Davila drew on Augustus Earle’s portrait of Bungaree, people. Bungaree (sometimes described as a ‘chief’ or
Bay aboriginal people. One of the few aborigines to receive recognition from white settlers as an
his presence into an eighteenth century print and a
individual, he mediated between whites and his
Pobre Diablo 1998. These works (reminiscent of
Port Jackson, dressed in cast-off military clothing.
Fragonard comedy of manners in Sudaca 1998 and
Robert Rauschenberg’s 1953 erasing of a de Kooning
own people. Often he would greet ships arriving in
In Earle’s painting he is shown wearing a military
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jacket, raising his hat in greeting, with ragged
trousers and bare feet. Records of the time recount
that he abandoned these clothes when amongst his own people. Thus his clothing and gestures acted
as a mask or disguise, allowing him to negotiate the
at once. In Davila’s works he appears in numerous
colourful, decorative work conveys Davila’s own
Latin American hermaphroditic angel (the giant foot
American Indigenous peoples and their treatment
Bungaree, he is the archetypal ‘savage’. Shown with a comes from Tarsila de Amaral’s works celebrating
polarized regions of colonialism.
indigeneity; the wings from Spanish colonial
Like Verdejo and the figure of the transvestite,
lace border reminiscent of folk art from the region
Bungaree embodies a certain mode of polymorphous identity — he is a go-between, a mimic, who
flourishes due to his ability to become two things
as The Savage Mind. Intentionally kitsch, this
guises and situations. In a 1991 work Portrait of
sense of the parallels between Australian and Latin
in Western culture.
paintings of armed angels) he is surrounded by a
When understood in context with those other
as well as religious or votive images. Beneath his feet
was fascinated, Bungaree suggests more than
Levi-Strauss’s infamous book known in English
He, like Verdeja, Bolívar and Kelly, represents a
are the words ‘pensee sauvage’, the title of Claude
characters or protagonists with whom Davila subversive resistance to a dominant culture.
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form of identity in transience. Davila’s various characters mutate, interbreed and reappear
throughout his oeuvre. As we have seen, Bolívar and Ned Kelly share the same space in The
Liberator Símon Bolívar; while Bungaree visits Federation Square with Verdejo / Verdeja, the Chilean comic character.
In a 2002 work Ned Kelly at Federation Square
these identities have literally merged and Davila
To return once more to where we began, with
breaks down the notion of a unitary self. ‘Ned Kelly’
A Panorama of Melbourne, mimicry as a strategy has
representations. A feminine face is surrounded
which are never panoramic, homogenized or
style of Bolívar or Bungaree which is open to reveal
Through these means his practice offers resistance
Bungaree’s characteristic gesture of greeting. Only
often exploratory and formative drawings, prints and
in this image retains few signifiers of his customary by long black hair; he wears a military coat in the
female breasts; he raises his hat above his head in
the presence of Kelly’s armoured mask in one hand
allowed Davila to create identities and perspectives
unitary but always multiple, shifting and ambivalent. to accepted cultural modes and ways of being. The
collages in ‘Juan Davila: Graphic’ reveal common or
and the title of the work give a clue as to his/her
recurrent themes, motifs and concerns, providing an
of Melbourne’s Federation Square.
practice as well as its continuities.
identity. In the background looms the architecture
insight into the diversity and versatility of Davila’s
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1
nelly Richard in Paul taylor, ed., hysterical tears,
Richmond: Greenhouse Publications, Richmond, POBRE Di ABLO 1995 SilkSCREEn on PaPER 100 x 77 C m Edition 100
1985, p. 19. 2
davila was an Honorary Creative Fellow at the
State library of victoria in 2007. 3
Roger Benjamin, ‘juan davila: panorama of
santiago, chile: 1973-2003’, anu drill Hall Gallery, http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/research/WtoS/ Benjamin.pdf. 4
Benjamin Genocchio has also linked davila to
mimicry, analysing his fascination with Bungaree in terms of colonial dynamics. See Benjamin Genocchio, ‘Quotation and iconoclasm in the Work of juan davila’, jilas journal of iberian and latin american studies, 5:2, december 1999. 5
julia kristeva, powers of horror: an essay on
abjection. trans. leon S Roudiez. new York, Columbia university Press, 1982, p.4 6
juan davila (interview), in Stephen o’Connell, ‘Blue
Chip instant decorator, Howard arkley and juan davila’, 1996, http://www.artdes.monash.edu.au/ globe/issue3/decorate.html. 7
Guy Brett, ‘nothing has been settled’ in Guy Brett
and Roger Benjamin (eds), juan davila, museum of Contemporary art (exhibition catalogue), 2006, p.4 8
juan davila cited in Guy Brett, transcontinental: an
investigation of reality, nine latin american artists, london: verso, 1990, p.15
title: Juan Davila: GRAPHIC! editor: S.P Wright essay: Abigail Fitzgibbons Publisher: Griffith Artworks, Sewell House, Nathan Campus, Griffith University AbN: 781 0609 4461 IsbN: 987-1-921291-68-5 Design by Liveworm Studio, Queensland College of Art Designer: Jasmin de la Vega Cruz
All images Š Juan Davila Licensed by Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne