PUBLIC ART PORTFOLIO: PAST & FORTHCOMING PROJECTS RODRIGO GHATTAS VISUAL ARTIST & CULTURAL PRODUCER T. +1 404-454-9083 / rghattas@machaqmara.org Lima, Peru
Memorial to the victims of terrorism 2013, Lima - Peru
This project is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between two architects and me. The project was focus on the dark time that Peru suffered in the hands of the MRTA and Sendero Luminoso, both terrorists groups that killed 70,000 Peruvians in the 80´s. What we tried to do is to connect and make visible a forgotten memory site that was located in the university campus (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru) as a remembrance of the students who died. In that sense this was not only an art intervention, but also we had developed a research about how Peruvians citizens become so stolidly indifferent through time and why is so important that we take a position of rejecting stand against oblivion. The artwork was supported by a recompilation of 10 of the most important interviews that were made in the 80´s and 90´s to the most important personalities and martyrs in the fight against terrorism. Mixed Media.
Memory Cube 2014, Lima - Peru
Memory Cube is a moveable piece art project made from building and demolition wastes from the construction site of the Museum of tolerance and social inclusion in Lima. It is based on a personal concern about a question that I asked myself: How should be a Remembrance Museum? During the 80´s the most affected populations were the ones located in the Peruvian Andes, they were literally exterminated by terrorists and militaries. After doing the project research I realized that a Museum like this should be itinerary, should be in the Andes and travel around the country, not in a luxury district in Miraflores, Lima just in front of the sea where nothing around this issue happened ever, where no one has access to it, for me this is an out of context Museum, it doesn’t response to history or sentiment. At the end this artwork became a critic but also is an unfinished piece, people is the one Mixed Media. who have to help me to complete the tour within the city until we reach the Museum, also they can finish the “walls” of the cube by hanging out, weaving, etc. the valuable items of their loss loved ones during the terrorism era.
Urban Weight 2015, Lima – Peru
Wood.
This project was realized in the framework of an illegal logging issue between some Peruvian central jungle native communities and timber traffickers in the area, a project developed during the II artist residency edition of Machaqmara Center for the Arts. I obtained different kind of wood that were confiscated by the Government and used them to create this installation artwork. The aim of the project was to elicit discourse about how artistic expression can be used as a powerful tool to protect the environment of our cities and make visible the role of the human beings in the world, a predator. In the other hand native communities are fighting against the illegal logging and want to protect their natural spaces asking the Peruvian Government to take all necessary measures to enforce the decree and halt illegal logging activities in the country, a hard duty that we as civilians need to take care about as well.
"Identidad Diferida" 2015, Lima – Peru
Ceramic.
An art intervention in San Ramon River, tree ceramic (gres) pieces similar to trees were made as a part of my artistic concern to create symbolic and poetic spaces that allow them to be transported back in time to recreate perpetually in the present and keep it as a new past, always reconstituting itself. I recently wanted to give life to spaces where the experience is shared mutually and collectively formed, through meditation and connection with nature. Previously acquired experience in Thailand as an artist in residence at the World Peace Initiative allows me to transfer and implement it again but now in Peruvian Amazonian landscape, which experiential liveness enables and even inevitable that merge. I built a new universe of signification for my artistic practice, linked to nature, the sky, the stars, the elements that the forest stands and peace which, as similar, make the relationship and feeling something immediately and spontaneous. The empowerment of the subject or its merger into a new space and time relationship, give rise to the constitution of new types of identities that the viewer is invited to experience as new forms of selfknowledge.
"Time is coming, in conversations with a nightmare" 2015, Lima – Peru
Mixed Media.
A sculptural installation developed for an upcoming exhibition at Museo Internazionale Italia Arte (MIIT) – Turin, Italy, in which a series of natural and unnatural elements coexist from its own materiality, support, size, nature and still manage to draw in space: scenes, materials, colors and shapes that have been playing in my unconscious in recent weeks while sleeping, for some time nightmares were recurring. Possibly pre cognitive nightmares are linked to the fate of the landscape, of nature; plants, water, earth; and human beings, inevitably linked to these conversations between a present me and absent me. A sort of blind reflection in which void becomes present invading everything I've known to date, in which the men we become a hindrance to the nature in which the visible made invisible, a process of disappearance in time. This first stage in which we observed the presence of the tangible is opposed to a second scenario in which the most significant natural elements disappear in various ways, becoming a space that shows a possible vision of the future, a vision full of absences, and we do not know for sure if it's real but the responsibility must be borne on us. Restore our harmony with the world and nature, is a pending and obligatory task we have in this modern age, otherwise we might be destined to live from the memory of an imaginary future filled with uncertainty, the invisible and inert.
"Reflection" Contemporary Talents 2015 - Theme: “Water” - FONDATION FRANÇOIS SCHNEIDER (France)
Marble & Water.
The present installation project consists of an interactive sculpture that depicts a big circular carved marble water mirror, while others stone fragments are scattered and part buried by soil, also adjacent to the central circular structure to simulate a "natural marble rug", it is important to show a transition from the marble in its natural state to marble intervened by the artist, and how both from their most inherent qualities may co-exist in this space; will that look like a sculpture created by natural forces, if I'm successful and I will it would seem part of nature. I’m interested to engage open and free spatial relationships between land, stone, light, reflection, water, sky and humanity. Thanks to my visits to most of Peruvian Andes Landscapes, Thailand and Japan, I could closely see and understand the ceremonial and mystical character that these civilizations gave to “water” in their daily and religious life. Especially what caught my attention was the Inca´s stone mortars (also known as “Qoyllur Sayana”) that worked as a water mirrors at that time and served to the ancient Peruvian. Water as a natural element facilitates the reflection of our visible world, becoming a perfect mirror of our own inner vision and purity connected to our natural world. Water allows us to look at ourselves and our environment, showing our contemplative life essence and translucency.
Artistic Meditation Session 2016, Lima - Peru
Nearly 100 people gathered in Miraflores boardwalk to join a 2 hours session, where meditation, healing sounds and art practice were the three main issues that allowed the participants to explore the gap between how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves through drawing.
Created by: Rodrigo Ghattas, Ruy Hinostroza, Angie Lorini. (Collaboration between Machaqmara Center for the Arts & Peace Revolution) Photo: Jimmy Barrios
"Animated Biosphere" 2016, Lima – Peru
This work was conceived during an important week in Peru where different environmental organizations came together to the purpose of making people aware of the importance of the safeguard of Peruvian Amazonia. I made a video installation where people can watch different natural scenarios of the Amazon forest and also listened to the animals who live there, the sound of the river, etc. It worked as a capsule, as a biosphere where people turned aware about the role that we must take to achieve an ecological sustainability. Video Installation.
A selfie took by Bayron Calderón during the “Conservamos Por Naturaleza” fest, in this work in particular was really important the interaction and participation of the people within the installation, an animated biosphere where you can voice your point of view.
"Inconvenience" 2016, Lima – Peru
Site Intervention.
Carved tree rings.
The project's concern is about generating a reflection on the level of violation and conflict between man and the space around him. In this case I’m focusing on nature perception within daily life. Together with the artist Carlos Montes we are carrying out this bipersonal exhibition. In which will be reflected from our own perspective the concepts of transgression and hindrance, making main use of sculpture as a visual medium. Thus, the exhibition and museography of this project outlines a parallel reality, showing itself as a truth representation of a natural history museum. Where nature is shown as a unique and rareness piece. In the same path, the works designed for public space aim to reinforce the idea of transgression itself.
"Perceptual Paradox" 2016, Chicago – USA
Site Intervention.
Perceptual Paradox seeks to be an exchange platform, an artistic and introspective scenario where every person is allow to connect in many diverse ways with itself and with the others, share values, thoughts, feelings, emotions, either if they are good, bad or just different. This workshop is an examination, a search, is about how we do perceive ourselves, our body and how can we be prepare, from that experience in time, to negotiate with an another person, with other soul, other body. This is what Ghattas called “Spaces of openness”, in this context within a process of recognition and respect for human body. In that sense we are going to experience the world of meditation (on live via Skype with a Buddhist Monk from Thailand, thanks to World Peace Initiative.) as an important tool to help us to set our mind free, to shape it, enhance our senses, perceptions and improved our creativity. It becomes a collective journey in which we can find our own personal path, a reflect on the status of movement, openness and enclosure, colors, matter, senses, fear and expectations. Perceptual Paradox will create a frame for challenging experiences where we are going to be push through the limits of physical senses and be able to paint with an open mind and with closed eyes.
PUBLIC ART PORTFOLIO: PAST & FORTHCOMING PROJECTS RODRIGO GHATTAS VISUAL ARTIST & CULTURAL PRODUCER T. +1- 404-454-9083 / rghattas@machaqmara.org Oslo, Norway