Artist Statement
I am interested in the alienated relation that we have established with nature in the present, I believe this is more a dissociation, or a battle, between culture and nature.
C.G. Jung wrote “I am certain there would be no spirit if it were not part of nature”, on the understanding that there are not two things, spirit and matter, but two aspects of one thing. This is the relation to nature that I wish I had.
It is true that one of my main interest is the representation of nature, and I`ve been working with it for about six or seven years now. But when working on Geographica I also discovered many things about memory, perception and fantasy that I still want to investigate.
Process Statement
I used appropiated images because these have already a meaning and also because they have shaped our understanding of landscape. It is a political gesture that becomes significant in terms of ecology and civilization. By using this pictures I wanted to state how they have become part of what we believe the world is and how photography has shaped our understanding of landscape.
In the process of creating this series I started to remove layers of information, so the images became etherial, abstract and minimal. I wanted to separate the document from its ground and to reduce the landscapes to a vague memory. By using a subtractive process I want them to appear as imaginary locales coming from the viewer’s mind, I make them appear invisible, timeless and inmaterial. The process helped me break with the literal aspect of the photographic document by introducing the imaginary as an experience.
Beatriz Diaz is a Graduate of Photography Video and Related Media at School of Visual Arts. She received her B.A. in Art History from Universidad Iberoamericana. Her one person shows include Nothing to Take, at One9Zero6 gallery in San Antonio, Texas and Mexican Photographs at Los Mexicanos gallery in Hamburg, Germany. She teaches at the Academy of Visual Arts (AAVI) in Mexico and writes for Fahrenheitº Magazine. She has been awarded with the Fulbright Scholarship, sponsored by the JUMEX Fundation/Collection and the Program of Scholarship for Studies Abroad of the National Fund for the Arts and Culture (FONCA). Lives and works in Mexico City and New York.
