If I say Colombia, you say drugs, guerrillas, prostitution. I would add religion, extremely present in the daily life of this Latin American country. But Colombia is much more than that, all in contradictions, in duality. On one side the shadow and on the other the light. Colombia is complex but beautiful.
These are all the contradictions that the photographer Véronique Durruty wanted to show us through her exhibition « Colombia, images of an unreal world ». This exhibition took place from March 22 to April 10, 2010 at the Consulate General of Colombia, 12 Rue de Berri, 75008 Paris, within the framework of the exhibitions « Hors les murs » of the Galerie Pictorium. The photographer offers us a real journey of the senses and sensations. And his photos, although dark, give off a lot of light. His photos are also full of emotion.
Véronique Durruty lives and works in Paris. His artistic work explores the journey through the senses and sensations. She develops her tactile, poetic, instinctive and rigorous approach on different creation supports, mainly photography, but also film, writing, drawing, and likes to mix genres: confronting the eye to the nose, the eye to the ear, the eye to the words. His work has been the subject of some twenty books and numerous exhibitions around the world. She is a member of the Rapho agency.
The exhibition begins at the entrance of the Consulate with a photo of a child looking into the distance. But the real point of departure of this exhibition is the central wall on which are enthroned photos of Andrea Quejuan, a Colombian actress. These photos tell the story of this young woman through diptychs, between disarticulated dolls or decapitated statues, bruised bodies but blindfolded eyes.
Andrea developed vitiligo after the murder of her brother during a massacre of innocents in the streets of Cali, a city famous for its drug cartels. Veronique met her and from there was born a desire, the desire to show her and to show us her natural beauty, this desire to tell us that beyond her disease, Andrea is beautiful. She is both repulsive and attractive, like her country Colombia. Her photos, like a testimony, show us that behind the pain can hide the most sublime and natural beauty. And to have seen it Andrea is really beautiful and moving.
All around Andrea’s photos, there are photos of Colombia, scenes of daily life. Photos of precious moments, of soft nights or sunsets, here a blue cross splitting into two, reminding us like a leitmotiv of the presence of religion in this country and the ghost of what it has become, there always diptychs in the continuity of duality….
The exhibition is over but the catalog of this exhibition is still available for download on the website of the Pictorium Gallery. It is up to you to follow Véronique in the journey she proposes…
Strange how lately I see beautiful things coming out of pain in art. And that’s what Veronique says, you have to sublimate this pain to extract the beauty from it. And beyond that, his photos gave me a desire: to discover Colombia.
Photo credits: copyright Véronique Durruty /Le Pictorium
http://veroniquedurruty.free.fr/
Gallery the Pictorium
12 rue du Moulin Joly, 75011 Paris
www.ledesk.com
Marie-Odile Radom