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Alinka Echeverría

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Alinka Echeverría (born 1981) is a Mexican-British artist and visual anthropologist. Echeverría's research-based works explore issues of visual representation through the media of photography, video and installation, focusing on the deconstruction of the masculine and colonial gaze.[1]

Early life and education

Alinka Echeverría was born in 1981 in Mexico City, Mexico. She was trained as an anthropologist and earned her master's degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh in 2004. Echeverría then worked on HIV prevention NGO projects in East Africa for several years.[2] She studied photography at the International Center for Photography in New York and graduated with a postgraduate degree in 2008.[1]

Life and work

In an interview with Kate Tiernan, she recognized that the migration of her family to northern England has had an impact on her works regarding themes of separation and union in relation to social and political struggles.[3]

Echeverría hosted a BBC documentary The Art that Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers in 2017.[4][5]

The Road to Tepeyac (2010)

The Road to Tepeyac depicts portraits of Mexican Catholic pilgrims from their back, who were on their way to the church of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This series of work, in Echeverría's words, is a "photographic typology." Through the icons of the Virgin of Guadalupe that was carried on the back of the pilgrims, the artist aimed to observe the visual representations of the Virgin of Guadalupe in contemporary Mexico.[6]

Becoming South Sudan (2011)

This portrait series sought to capture the gazes of individual South Sudanese at the time of the independence of South Sudan, following decades of war, in 2011.[7] Exploring the becoming and self-determination of individual South Sudanese, this portrait series addresses the powerful representation of these individuals. Echeverría was also interested in investigating the meaning of South Sudan becoming an independent nation for its unification of sixty-nine tribes at the time.[8] She sees this series of works as a collaborative project, in which South Sudanese teenagers would stand in front of her camera and she would expose them to the world. Being photographed a few weeks before the independence of South Sudan, this project captures various South Sudanese across social classes, including refugees to police forces. Echeverría was also interested in the birth of a nation and its transformation from social anomy to civil society, as well as the creation of state institutions.[9]

Nicephora (2015–present)

In 2015, She started the research-based project Nicephora during the BMW photographer-in-residency at the musée Nicéphore Niépce.[1][10] This project incorporates various media including collage, sculpture, three-dimensional rendering, sound installation, photography etc. In this project, Echeverría sought to deconstruct how the representations of women have long been constructed by the male gaze in male-dominated practices of early photography.[2] This project stemmed from the photographic archives of Nicéphore Niépce Museum in France, a museum that centers the photography of Nicéphore Niépce, who was the inventor of photography.[11] Echeverría's interest lies in the origins of photography as a medium and Nicéphore Nièpce's obsession with infinitely reproducible images. She appropriated and feminized the photographer's name symbolically as the title of this project. Echeverría's intention was thus to problematize Nicéphore Nièpce's colonial and male gaze and practices of capturing, reproducing and disseminating images of females in French North Africa at the time. She views such practices to be inherent in photography since the invention of the medium. She scanned approximately four hundred images from the archive, particularly images of females. This project is also Echeverría's exploration of her Latin feminine contemporary perspective.[12]

To Echeverría, this project is a fieldwork, in which the field is the basement of the museum. As an anthropologist and photographic artist, she interrogates and deconstructs how these images ungird colonial and male gaze, seeking a contemporary overturn of these inherently biased practices. The other research objective of this project is to investigate how viewers are conditioned to read these images and how photographers are conditioned to construct them. While the practice of othering females remains to be the code of seeing until this day, Echeverría reframed and rendered these images using techniques such as collage to scrutinize how the purpose of these images can be changed, regarding their contexts and materiality.[13]

Awards

  • In 2011, she received the HSBC Prize For Photography in France.
  • In 2012, Echeverría was honoured under the Lucie Awards category International Photography Awards as International Photographer of The Year.[14]
  • Echeverría is a nominee of Prix Elysée 2018–2020, The Musée de l'Elysée prize for supporting mid-career photography artists.[15][16]
  • In 2020, she was awarded the MAST Foundation overall exhibition prize for her work 'Apparent Femininity', commissioned by the Foundation. The exhibition was curated the Urs Stahel.

Solo exhibitions

  • 2015: South Searchin, Gazelli Art House[17]
  • 2016: Nicephora R Espace BMW Art & Culture, Paris Photo Grand Palais[18][19]
  • 2016: Becoming South Sudan, The Ravestijn Gallery, Amsterdam[20]
  • 2019: Simulacra: Alinka Echeverría, Montréal Museum of Fine Arts[21]
  • 2020: Heroine, Light Work, Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery[22] This recent exhibition centers on her project Nicephora (2015–present). By naming the exhibition Heroine, she intends to stress that the heroines of past, present and future are always the women as mothers, gatherers, community leaders, caregivers, inventors, artists and archaeologists.[23][13]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Biography". Alinka Echeverria. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  2. ^ a b "Reimagining the Image: Alinka Echeverría". International Center of Photography. 1 April 2019. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  3. ^ Tiernan, Kate. "Alinka Echeverria: 'As soon as you lift up the camera, you make the other person vulnerable'". www.studiointernational.com. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  4. ^ "BBC Four - The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers". BBC. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  5. ^ Rees, Jasper (4 December 2017). "The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power, Prayers - a journey that puts everyone in the picture: review". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  6. ^ Echeverria, Alinka (28 February 2011). "100 Words: Photographer Alinka Echeverria On Pilgrimage". NPR. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  7. ^ "Becoming South Sudan | Alinka Echeverría | Gallery Viewer". galleryviewer.com. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  8. ^ "Alinka Echeverría | South Searching | Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  9. ^ Photo, World Press (2 June 2013), Alinka Echeverría, retrieved 18 March 2022
  10. ^ "musée Nicéphore Niépce - BMW photographer-in-residence". en.museeniepce.com. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  11. ^ "musée Nicéphore Niépce - Photography". en.museeniepce.com. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  12. ^ "Projects_Nicephora_Field_Notes". Alinka Echeverria. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  13. ^ a b Work, Light (11 November 2020), Alinka Echeverría: Heroine, retrieved 18 March 2022
  14. ^ "LUCIES | 2012 HONOREES". LUCIES. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  15. ^ "Previous editions - Photo Elysée – Photo Elysée". prixelysee.ch. 12 January 2022. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  16. ^ "Prix international de photographie - Photo Elysée – Photo Elysée". prixelysee.ch (in French). 20 December 2021. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  17. ^ "Works - SOUTH SEARCHING". Gazelli Art House. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  18. ^ "BMW Art et Culture présente Nicephora par Alinka Echeverria, lauréate de la Résidence BMW au musée Nicéphore Niépce". www.press.bmwgroup.com (in French). Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  19. ^ "Exhibitions". Alinka Echeverria. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  20. ^ "Alinka Echeverria". The Ravestijn Gallery. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  21. ^ "Simulacra: Alinka Echeverría". Montreal Museums. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  22. ^ "Alinka Echeverría: Heroine | Light Work". www.lightwork.org. 5 October 2020. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  23. ^ Work, Light (9 October 2020), Alinka Echeverría: Fieldnotes for Nicephora, 2018, retrieved 18 March 2022
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