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Gallery Exhibitions  Narratives / Blogs |
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Kriftoffer Ardena | Spain When a person walks up to the restrooms at any public place, they are confronted with two gender-coded images: a sign representing a male and a sign representing a female. In his 2005 installation entitled Anonimia, Madrid-based, Philippino artist, Kristoffer Ardena raises the question: Are these the visual images with which you relate yourself to your gender-identity? Originally part of a large installation of 500 paintings gridded onto a wall, Ardena calls the 15 pieces submitted to the EnGendered Species exhibition an “address to the issue of embodiment of gender, race, ethnicity, and culture in contemporary Spanish society.” Each painting in the installation is relatively small, 42x30 cms, and Ardena uses a strategy that can be related to graffiti techniques. After tearing street posters from their original locations, Ardena spray paints a silhouetted figure on each of the liberated posters. The images of figures are taken from newspapers and represent a politician, a sport star, a mother, a rock star, a victim, a hero, and other identifiable types of people. Ardena then makes a stencil of the selected image, and using Krylon spray paint, transfers the image to the ripped street poster. During the transfer, the figure becomes a silhouetted shape, blurring and sometimes obscuring its formerly clear personal, social, racial, and gender identifying signifiers. By putting the figures on the street posters Ardena is placing his identity-confused figures back into society, but their original classifications have disappeared, leaving what the artist believes to be a utopian society where the issue of identity politics has lost its power to label and divide. Everyone has become an individual figure against the background of the city environment. - by Crystal Atry
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