2 min
Escena en campo abierto (“Stage in an Open Field”), by Valentina Cardellino
Valentina Cardellino, in creating Escena en campo abierto, invites us to participate in an investigation based on fragments of life, evoked through drawings and a video depicting miscellaneous objects found in the Bay of Montevideo.
A poetry of objects
Valentina Cardellino was born in 1985 in Montevideo, Uruguay. There she studied art and architecture, disciplines which she continues to practise in tandem. Her visual art work focuses on everyday objects, which she approaches with plenty of humour and poetry.
The shapes of life
Plastic bottles, a shoe, cups, a doll which has lost its eyes, a straw... Drawn with meticulous care, these mundane pieces of refuse are showcased by Valentina Cardellino in her Escena en campo abierto, which seeks to recreate their histories and their origins, with the ultimate goal of reconnecting them with human lives. Fragments of life, childhood memories and shared meals, the artist sketches the contours of each object in digitally printed drawings and in a fifteen-minute video projected in a loop.
An unusual investigation
Like a detective at a crime scene, Valentina Cardellino scrutinises the elements which make up Escena en campo abierto extremely carefully. She first identified a twenty-five square metre area in the Bay of Montevideo where the waste carried by the Rio de la Plata accumulates, and then patiently reconstructed its contours. Through her scientific approach to an undertaking which is devoid of any utilitarianism and is instead essentially poetic, Valentina Cardellino creates a work in an "open field" which is open to any interpretation.
An award and a residency
Escena en campo abierto by Valentina Cardellino received the 2018 Paul Cézanne award, granted by the French Embassy in Uruguay. Recognised as an “alternative way of taking ownership of the city” and a “critical reflection” on the art of drawing, the work allowed the Uruguayan artist to spend three months in residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.
Winner of the Cézanne Award, distributed by the French Embassy in Uruguay, Valentina Cardellino was in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in 2018.
Find out more about the residency programme at the Cité Internationale des Arts.