This book echoes the exhibition “Patria” presented at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2023.

Este libro se hace eco de la exposición “Patria” presentada en los Rencontres d’Arles en 2023.

MEET THE ARTIST oleÑka carrasco

ABOUT oleñka carrasco

© Andreina Mujica

Oleñka Carrasco’s artistic approach is essentially multidisciplinary: she experiments and questions photography and its medium, writing, drawing and performance to address subjects always closely related to her intimate experience. Poetry and literature are never absent from this process of exploration. The photo book is also at the heart of her practice, her unique layouts and editions are finalists for awards and prizes for their rich content in which word and image are composed, blended and enhanced in a balanced way. El enfoque artístico de Oleñka Carrasco es esencialmente multidisciplinar: experimenta y cuestiona la fotografía y su soporte, la escritura, el dibujo y la performance para abordar temas siempre estrechamente relacionados con su experiencia íntima. La poesía y la literatura nunca están ausentes de este proceso de exploración. El fotolibro también está en el centro de su práctica, sus maquetaciones y ediciones únicas son finalistas de premios y galardones por su rico contenido en el que palabra e imagen se componen, mezclan y realzan de forma equilibrada.   Oleñka is the winner of the Prix Photo Folio Review 2022 of the Rencontres d’Arles and her work will be presented at the Rencontres d’Arles 2023 (Cruise). Oleñka es la ganadora del Prix Photo Folio Review 2022 de los Rencontres d’Arles y su obra se presentará en los Rencontres d’Arles 2023 (Crucero).

This book echoes the exhibition “Patria” presented at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2023.

“On June 9, 2020, I got a call.
On this side of the Atlantic, it must have been ten o’clock, yes, it must have been ten o’clock.
He’s dead,” she yelled at me. I found him dead.”

On June 9, 2020, the artist Oleñka Carrasco learns through a video call that her father has died. The book PATRIA is the moving account of this mourning, of the questions of identity that it raises, and more generally of the history of Venezuela and its exiles since 2015, the date of the artist’s last trip to her native country.

Human experience par excellence, the confrontation with death is told here through the artistic reappropriation of family archives; photographs, videos, audios … thousands of documents sent by WhatsApp on which the artist intervenes and creates works in themselves. In addition, Oleñka Carrasco takes pictures of her living space in France, the “loaned house”, shots that she transforms, manipulates, alters by using a typewriter. The typed text dialogues with the images and seems, as the story is told, to reveal the mystery of these human lives while intensifying it.

“It is through the simple story of the loss of a loved one, my pater, that the collapse of Venezuela, my patria, is revealed to me.”

OLEÑKA CARRASCO

The book PATRIA offers an exemplary work on an intimate history, the visual archives of a family, asking the question of memory and oblivion, of the reappropriation by art of the past and memories.

“It is through the simple story of the loss of a loved one, my father, that the collapse of Venezuela, my homeland, is revealed to me.”

Oleñka Carrasco

This book offers an exemplary work on an intimate history, the visual archives of a family, raising questions about memory and forgetting, and the reappropriation of the past and memories through art.

The work, which combines both writing and visual art, is divided into two parts.

From the figure of the father, or “pater” in chapter 1, Oleñka leads us to that of the homeland, or “patria” in chapter 2. Starting from a personal family history, the artist touches on a great collective and human story, that of the inalienable belonging to the clan and the country that saw us born.

Chapter 1, “House Loaned for Mourning,” is an intimate account of mourning experienced from afar. Oleñka is in France, in a childhood home “that is not hers,” when she learns of the death of her father, who lived in Venezuela. In the midst of the pandemic, Oleñka mourns her father from afar, through the creation of a powerful photographic and literary work. Chapter 2, “Small Country,” addresses the universal question of exile and the unbreakable bond that ties each of us to our homeland, our land of origin, regardless of our history and our journey.

An interview between Oleñka Carrasco and Venezuelan writer Alberto Barrera Tyszka, conducted by journalist Saraí Suárez, puts Venezuela’s contemporary history into perspective through the artist’s family story.

MEET THE ARTIST oleÑka carrasco

ABOUT oleñka carrasco

Oleñka Carrasco’s artistic approach is essentially multidisciplinary: she experiments and questions photography and its medium, writing, drawing and performance to address subjects always closely related to her intimate experience. Poetry and literature are never absent from this process of exploration. The photo book is also at the heart of her practice, her unique layouts and editions are finalists for awards and prizes for their rich content in which word and image are composed, blended and enhanced in a balanced way.

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Oleñka is the winner of the Prix Photo Folio Review 2022 of the Rencontres d’Arles and her work will be presented at the Rencontres d’Arles 2023 (Cruise).

Unique pieces and artist’s proofs

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