Elena Alonso Fernández – “Ay mija, no es fácil!” (Ay mija, it’s not easy!)
Exhibition & Artist Talk
New Media Projects exhibition: May 22 – June 8, 2019
Opening reception, New Media Projects: Wednesday, May 22, 7 – 10 pm
Closing reception & Artist Talk, New Media Projects: Saturday, June 8
Elena Alonso Fernández will show her project “Ay mija, it’s not easy!” during her residency program at New Media Projects: It is a participatory painting project made in collaboration with Cubans, from both the Berlin diaspora and Cuba itself. Ay mija! denies a homogeneous collective identity, and embraces instead the polyphony and contradictions present in the Cuban society.
The biographical testimonies of the participants served as the basis for a series of paintings and a video installation exhibited in Santiago de Cuba (2018). During this exhibition, they invited the gallery visitors to participate and complete the project which was initiated in the diaspora.
As dialog is one of the central topics of Ay Mija!, the project becomes different meanings depending on the reception context. In a Cuban context it raises questions about the collective identity; in Berlin invites to a reflection about the Euro-centric vision of alterity and opens a door for empathy with “the other” through the biographical testimonies of the participants.
Elena is curious to experience how the Iranian public connects with Ay mija! and continue her research about the potential of participatory projects engaging with different social contexts and audiences.
In addition, she intends to share with the Iranian public the experience of this creative process between Berlin and Cuba – and her experience with other previous collaborative artworks -through an open artist talk on June 8, 2019.
Elena Alonso Fernández is born in 1986 in Vigo (Galicia, Spain), currently lives and works in Berlin. She studied fine arts at Salamanca University. And then she graduated from UdK’s postgraduate master’s program “Art in Context”. For further information: http://elenaalonsofernandez.com/
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