Launch 6pm Wednesday 2nd May
Running 3-31 May
At Instituto Cervantes Dublin, 6-16 Lincoln Place, Dublin 2
Thanatology asserts that not seeing the dead body of our beloved ones prevents us from accepting their death. Contemplating the body of the deceased helps us overcome one of the most complex stages of grief: denial. Mariela and her twin sister were not allowed to see the dead body of their father. She never knew if that was because he committed suicide or because of Jewish religious beliefs or both.
“Not seeing him has made us doubt his death in many ways. The feeling that everything was a nightmare and the fantasy we both have that we are going to find him walking in the street or sitting in a cafe has accompanied us all these years.” Mariela once read that fiction´s primary task is to favor evolution, forcing us to acknowledge and become the otherness around us. She believes fiction can help us depict the endless reservoir of the unconscious, allowing us to represent our desires and fantasies. Moisés is a typology of portraits of men in their 70´s, the age the artist’s father would be today if he were alive.
ABOUT MARIELA SANCARI
Mariela Sancari was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1976. She lives and works in Mexico City since 1997.
Her work revolves around identity and memory and the way both are mingled and affected by each other. She examines the thin and elusive line dividing memories and fiction. She has received numerous awards for her work: Winner of the VI Bienal Nacional de Artes Visuales Yucatan 2013 and PHotoEspaña Descubrimientos Prize 2014, her work was selected for the XVI Bienal de Fotografía from Centro de la Imagen and received an Honorable Mention in XI Bienal Monterrey FEMSA.
Her first book Moisés was selected by several curators and reviewers, such as Sean O’Hagan, Tim Clark, Erik Kessels, Jörg Colberg, Larissa Leclair, Yumi Goto and Colin Pantall, among others, as one of the Best Photobooks published in 2015. She has recently published her second book in collaboration with writer Adolfo Córdova: Mr. & Dr., a photobook aimed for children and youngsters that explores the notion of the unknown through images and text. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Mexico City, Madrid, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, New York, Sao Paulo, Caracas, Fort Collins, Houston and Busan (Korea).
