Series: “179°” 

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This work was selected for the 61st "Clever Lara" National Visual Arts Award from the Ministry of Education and Culture and was exhibited at the Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, EAC, between September 2024 and March 2025. It is part of an investigation, drawing on a personal visual poetics, into how we create [or believe we create] knowledge in the contemporary world.

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According to the Aymara worldview, we walk with our backs to the future and the past before our eyes, aware of what was, toward the uncertainty of the unknown to come. 179° is an investigation into the supposed 180° turns we believe, or are led to believe, we are making as a society when we seek to appropriate or align ourselves with alternative visions while remaining on normative platforms. This makes the metaphorical "1°" missing from the 180° more relevant than the remaining 179°.

On a visual level, the research is inspired by fog-covered landscapes, a focus of almost neurotic detail from which planes of color emerge, simultaneously intertwining figuration and abstraction. Fog as a common thread, in tune with the metaphor of 179°, since when faced with a space covered in fog, perception takes on meaning in reverse. Walking backward, looking at the landscape, it disappears as we move away, but those who were there have no doubt of its existence. However much the past may be covered, it is present in the memory of those who lived it.

The inspiration in this composition is a landscape of Beijing, during a particularly foggy period, which gave me that feeling of only being able to discover what I allowed myself and managing to speculate about what I was never able to uncover.

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M. Carolina Fontana, 2024

Technical details of the work:

 

Year of completion: 2024

Technique/support/material: Oil paint on canvas (linen and cotton)

Dimensions: The work is composed of three panels, each measuring 150 x 120 cm (frame thickness: 2 cm), aligned horizontally, with 10 cm between them, for a total of 470 x 120 cm.