Bendana | Pinel Art Contemporain is pleased to present “Hills in a Distance”, the first solo exhibition of Francisca Aninat at the gallery.
A coincidental encounter, an envelope with several photographs from the 1940s, is the starting point for the exhibition. The artist uses visuals to visit unknown places and develop a journey through a fragmented story of someone she knew nothing about. Aninat researched for more information about the black and white images depicted, as they have hand-written notes behind them, and found some brief certainties. Among them, these were photographs of two sisters, who did journeys through Africa, Australia, and India. Immersed in this envelope was also a collection of medical gestures, nature and plant depictions, fragments of newspapers, and portraits of different people. Hills in a Distance reveals how this envelope contains what they were longing to retain. Either through the scraps of information or through the use of photographs that they beautifully developed with natural light, as shown in the word Velox, along with the quick notes behind the images.
The artist relocated the pictures into a vast universe and collection of forms, looking thoroughly through the images and the notes left behind them. In fragile materiality, visuals are redrawn into plaster, transferred into a canvas, or placed facing us with the narratives they portray. As a whole, we find that all the objects are inter-related, a red string becomes a way of holding the clues, the certainties that the artist unravels. Aninat seems to question what we see, and what is left behind, what is said and not said in these images, and how to follow the expectations. Who were those they followed on their journeys, what were they afraid of, and if they reached a sense of belonging in the remote places they visited?
The title for this exhibition, Hills in a Distance, comes from the handwritten notes in the photographs. It refers to reflective moment, as when one is in his/her own space, a location from where to look, to see what was happening, gather the visuals, and write the notes. Those thoughts were shared in writing, and then, as if something happened suddenly, this envelope was left behind. It took Aninat a while to comprehend that these images haven’t been lost, but probably have been the remains of an album, torn apart, and waiting to be looked at by someone else.
