FONS ÀUDIO #34 Daniela Ortiz
- 00:01 Arrival
- 02:52 "Estat-Nació"
- 03:40 Public figures and monuments: Managing the narrative of Catalan independence
- 13:53 Scarce documentation
- 17:25 Doing the same thing in other spaces
- 19:59 Citizenship and European borders
The artistic work of Daniela Ortiz (Cuzco, Peru, 1985) and Xose Quiroga (Ourense, Spain, 1979) has a strong component of social struggle. For the past few years, the artists have been carrying out extensive research into migration control strategies and their legal and technical, economic, and media deployment, with special emphasis on the national and political borders of southern Europe. At the same time, they explore how colonial narratives shape the lives of the immigrant population, a social group that is often vulnerable because of their disenfranchised status.
The duo’s projects generate a real-time framework for political discussion that they then speed up so that it multiplies and spreads to contexts beyond the art world. 'Estat Nació - Part 1. Exercici#1 Història', which was recently acquired by the MACBA Collection, consists of a set of photographs and inscriptions that correspond to historical figures who are commemorated in Barcelona’s public space in spite of having actively participated in colonial and slavery processes. The series includes figures such as Christopher Columbus, General Joan Prim i Prats, Amat i Junyet, Antoni López i López, Josep Xifré, Valeriano Weyler and Joan Güell, as well as institutions such as the Banco de Barcelona, the Círculo Hispano Ultramarino and the Banco Hispano Colonial, which were involved in anti-abolitionist policies and provided financial support to the colonies.
'Estat Nació - Part 1. Exercici#1' Història is part of the larger project 'Estat Nació', which explores the relationship between processes of sovereignty construction and the discourses, laws, and rules that affect the immigrant population. It is a work in progress that uses several languages and time-frames: from videos that record actions in public spaces and then go viral to documentation of Catalan language classes in which xenophobic speeches by politicians are used as educational materials, by way of informative counter-manuals on how to pass the tests that measure integration into Spanish society.