FOURTH WORLD:
CURRENT PHOTOGRAPHY FROM COLOMBIA
September 10 - October 24, 2015
Opening Reception: September 10, 2015, 6 - 8 PM

PRESS RELEASE
Colombian Photography Captures an Unfamiliar 'Fourth World', KQED Arts, Sept 2015
'Current Photography From Colombia' Shares the Colombian Experience with S.F., SF Weekly, Sept 2015
'Fourth World: Current Photography from Colombia" Exposición de Fotografia en San Francisco, California, arteinformado.com, Sept 2015
'Fourth World: Current Photography from Colombia", artpractical.com, Oct 2015
Entrevista | Santiago Rueda, GASTV, Oct 2015

SF Camerawork is pleased to present: Fourth World: Current Photography from Colombia. Organized by curators Carolina Ponce de León and Santiago Rueda Fajardo, the exhibition will be on view at SF Camerawork from September 10 through October 24, 2015.

Fourth World: Contemporary Photography from Colombia will highlight the work of four photographers whose images explore experiences of cultural and ideological conflict that characterize daily life in Colombia. The exhibition title, taken from a series of works by artist Jaime Ávila, suggests a geographical and social specificity that points to the urgency surrounding photography in Colombia today. Embedded in a history of social and armed conflict, ethnography, anthropology, journalism and political activism, the most compelling photography emerging from the country grapples with the weight of history, questioning its visual codes and blending them with contemporary concerns. Complex and fundamental issues such as class, identity, economic survival and a sixty-year civil war merged with illegal drug trafficking remain very much on the surface.

 The photographs included in the exhibition reveal an enigmatic relationship with the 'real' world that they seem to depict. Each photograph is a translation, a distillation of reality that is complex and full of layers and can be understood as fragments containing the essence of the whole.

ARTISTS

Jaime Ávila is a visual artist based in Bogota. Much of Avila’s work centers on portraits of marginal young adults, while looking at the economics implied in their performativity —sense of fashion, street attitude, sexual demeanor as well as the urban landscape they inhabit. Jaime Ávila has presented his work at international contemporary art events such as the 9th Havana Biennial (Cuba), the 29th Sao Paulo Bienal (Brazil), and the 3rd Liverpool Biennial (UK), among others.

Zoraida Díaz is a Colombian-born photographer who has covered Latin America for the Reuters News Picture Agency for over 20 years. Based out of Bogotá, Buenos Aires and Washington D.C. In her body of work on Colombia she has documented the painful reality of her homeland, events, and circumstances beyond the scope of the ordinary.

Luz Elena Castro is San Francisco-based photographer, born and raised in Medellín, Colombia. She began her career as a staff photographer for El Mundo Newspaper and has worked as a photojournalist for the EFE News Agency in Madrid, the BBC in London, and El Tiempo in Bogotá.

Andres Felipe Orjuela is a Colombian-born artist currently living in Mexico. Orjuela’s work has been exhibited in Colombia, the United States, Mexico, Panama, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, France, Spain and England. His work addresses the nature of power, altering the sensationalism of journalistic images through graphic interventions. He uses the process of gathering and contrasting data and communication platforms to make evident and interfere in the mechanics of media circulation, consumption, and the dominant political and economical establishment.

CURATORS

Carolina Ponce de León is the Visual Arts Advisor at the Ministry of Culture of Colombia. She was formerly the Curator at the Museo del Barrio in NYC, and Director of San Francisco’s Galería de la Raza. Her book, The Butterfly Effect: Critical Writings on Art and Culture in Colombia (2004), by the Instituto Distrital de Cultura in Bogotá, Colombia, is currently in its second printing.

Santiago Rueda Fajardo is an independent curator with a PhD in History, Theory and Art Criticism. Rueda Fajardo has been a juror for national awards and grant programs in Colombia, as well as a professor at several universities in Bogotá. He won the National Award for Critical Essays on Colombian Art (2004 and 2008) for Híper / ultra / neo / post: Miguel Angel Rojas 30 años de arte en Colombia and “A line of dust. Arts and drugs,” (2006).

This exhibition is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Galería Nueveochenta.