Workshop and show. Sala Experimental Padre Arellano, Centro Cultural Padre Guillermo Plaza. Marzo 2017.
Cheo Carvajal
A map is an abstraction of something organic and alive. There are lines, tracings that try to give a full account of a complex reality. A map is the expression of an order that with luck suggests our own presence. But not always: a map does not always collect the whole plot. There are unnamed and invisible places. Missing streets, corners, names. With that concealment, stories, expectations and desires disappear.
Thus, a map ends up being a single vision not a multiplicity of gazes in which the voids are the result of regrettable and often deliberate omissions. Reconstructing them entails passing through a process first, not of vector transformation but of real appropriations, of step-by-step recognition on the ground. That exploratory gaze opens new spaces and demands. It demands to belong on the street, in society and, finally, in the map.
To make the connection between our habitual pathways and that symbolic representation is an almost therapeutic task to recognize ourselves in space and situate ourselves in the territory but it is also strategic. The map is a photograph of a moment that is very static, it speaks intrinsically of a reality in the process of change. Another reality where we as citizens should not be simply witness but turn ourselves instead into actors, into protagonists.
This exhibition in progress is built of itineraries between five schools in Antímano, Caracas, and the Andres Bello Catholic University (UCAB). These are connections, bridges and exchanges that convert the map into plastic evidence, a tracing that is a mood and a desire. As a reference, we put together a small show by the visual artist Natalya Critchley like the experience in 2015 by this same team of artists-activist-facilitators in San Agustín del Sur and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
This exhibition is a project in which two UCAB teams participate: Mabel Calderín and Humberto Valdivieso from the Padre Plaza Central Library Cultural Centre and the MAPEA facilitator team, counting with the kind support of the Banco Occidental de Descuento.
Walks and workshops with:
- U.E.N. Andrés Bello
- Colegio Refugio de la Infancia
- Escuela Fe y Alegría Prisco Villasmil
- Escuela Fe y Alegría San José Obrero
- Unidad Educativa Policial Laudelino Mejías
Distracciones del demiurgo cartográfico, Cheo Carvajal, Contrapunto.com, marzo 2017
Natalya Critchley 