Column, 2013. From the series Máscaras o Más Caras (Masks or More Faces)
FEATURED ON OUR HOME PAGE!
We introduce new collaborator, artist Naimar Ramírez! Read more about her work below.
A mask is an intermediary between its wearer and the outside world: a filter, screen or shield.
Photographs of textures from my (current) environment are sculpted, free-form, into heads with unclear identities. In order to transform the object into subject, they are documented, translated back into an image, which is presented on a paper similar to that of which they are made.
In the simplest terms, it is a covering. It can be created in solitude, as an individual expression; it can also be part of a ritual, a cultural action, a response (in agreement or opposition) to society. It can be and do many things at once: it can provide protection or disguise, it can transform and decorate, it can cast a likeness or provide as well as remove an identity, and it can establish a social/cultural connection. It can be deliberate, unintentional or forced upon.
Naimar Ramírez is an artist who concentrates in photography and sculpture. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in 2011 with a degree in Environmental Design and Photography, and is currently enrolled in the Photography M.F.A. at Savannah College of Art and Design. A deep interest in cultural encounters and language as well as the inevitable effects of translation on communication, fuel a search for similar mutations in her visual work. The transformations from abstract thought to concrete words are reflected in the photographic explorations, where often images are transformed into empty threedimensional pieces that are presented with an air of 'objectness.'
