Hi, my name is Sissely and this is my new Web page. Follow me on LinkedIn for regular updates, or have a look at the gallery for some of my Paintings.
2nd August 2019
Hi, I am translating a curatorial text about my work into English, published in Uruguay and Brasil, for the event "Art Experience Tour". The paintings for this event were curated and selected by Delloite Foundation, in 2012.
"The plastic artist Hedy Sissely Cordero Barrios meets with her artworks in strong intensity existential moments. Her paintings are related to dream worlds: shadows like ghosts, winged goblins, whispering angels. They refer to parallel "Universes" whose mixture with this daily routine we call "Reality".
There are, in her images, many questions thrown into the Cosmos... mythical messages commune with multidimensional beings: ancient voices bring invitations from distant games. Everything calls for permanence in this hinge time, Here and Now.
With the force of the colour in jets, in passionate contrast of opposites, on very high palettes sometimes... on very shy and melancholic palettes, other times, the artist plays to reinvent us.
Other times it is matter that imposes itself, colludes, to finish assembling the plot: there is darkness inside the being but even so, there is a purpose to fulfil. Everything goes in circular thought, evidencing the eternal struggle of opposites, the constant return to Unity.
This intense but not apocalyptic work shows that other "Logic" are possible, other worlds are attainable. "
11th March, 2023
#students #art #painting #artist #work #learning #communication
What does it mean to communicate visual arts?
I believe by communicating visual arts you stablish a dialogue between the art manifestations -paintings, art objects, performances, design products, etc.- with the audience. It is the way you show you art products to convey meaning, how you communicate meaning and connect the art products with the viewers. This process is related with interpretation: you must also understand human behavior and cross-cultural communication. Visual communication has been used among humans since the beginning of time, for different purposes: with magical and utilitarian reasons at the the beginning, for example, when men and women represented themselves hunting the bizons on the cave walls; they represented what they wanted to happen in reality. From there until today visual communication has come a long way.
Art is something to communicate, but the question is how to use an adequate communication channel to connect to the audience in an effective way. I also think visual communication can be very effective considering we humans have different intelligences and approaches to learning and understanding: images are much more powerful than other ways to convey meaning in an instant. That´s why art can be such a powerful and revolutionary tool.
One way of guiding the students is encouraging them to visit exhibitions, art galleries and museums. You need to see and experience art to have an understanding of its effects, its ways of transforming and approaching reality. You can also visit on-line exhibitions, although it is a different kind of experience, but still you can explore the curatorial set up. Learning by example, by experience.
The curatorial rationales are interesting and super challenging: normally, in real life, artists do not write their rationales. It is a curator, a gallery or a museum that writes and decodify the intrinsic mechanisms of an artistic approach. As an artist myself it is really challenging to separate myself from my work as to elaborate my own curatorial texts. You lack objectivity, you are too close to your own work.
Of course as a teacher I need to guide students to an approach of curatorial writings. My way is always by experimenting exhibitions and getting involved by other artists languages as much as they can. I give also much importance to the topic, their topic underlaying their body of work: what is your message, what do you want to say?
Sometimes we also say: the viewer completes the work of art. As an artist you make the set up to convey meaning in an effective way but it is always the audience who has the last word. As viewers we probably decodify artistic meanings with the tools we have learned, within our cultural frames. Students are immersed in this cultural ways of decodifying reality.
I tell the students: art that has nothing to say is just decorative, we are not here to decorate, we do not care if the painting match the colour of the sofa. As artists we must find a challenging topic, something that shakes us from our comfort zone. First the topic, then we check which techniques or media we will use. We should deconstruct reality to understand what is lying beyond, that´s the real challenge.
I will refer to Kate Hartman, "The Art of wearable communication" exercising "curatorial rationale" writing.
Kate Hartman describes her work as "wearable communication". In her TED talk, she shows us how she explores technology and creativity, designing what she calls "wearable objects", allowing our bodies to communicate in new ways. It is an exploration of communication styles and their implications as well as new technology applied to human uses. "Bodies matter", she says, "cause everybody´s got one". The whole body becomes an interface transcending traditional ways of interacting with technology.
For Hartman, creativity is the ultimate tool for asking questions and explorations as well as for education and expression. During her TED talk, she describes some of her Art-objects-devices, their uses and how she developed the concept, including the several materials she uses to build these objects. When she describes the "talk to yourself" device, for example, she points out that what matters is the negative space around the object, an attribute that you would normally consider for a sculptural work of art but not for a device where the prime function is normally what the object does. Her devices or art objects make us wonder about how we communicate with ourselves and to others, they make us wonder about connection: active listening, social protocols for communication, and how devices may play an important role in the way we relate to others and to the world around us.
For Hartman the question: "what does it do?" is not the best approach to her creative work, as her devices are not limited to utility, but to the curious act of making first and then understanding. There is an evolution, an upgrade, from those objects of design created under the Bauhaus principles, especially that "form follows function". I believe form and function acquire new roles in Hartman´s work: as she defines "making as a curious act" more than an act of finding functionality. The artist has a playful approach to creativity, taking the viewer into a critical analysis of how we connect to electronic devices but as a joyful adventure.
We can also discover during the TED talk how art objects grow in scale: from a "hat" or an "inflatable heart" she goes into an invitation to "hug a glacier" device. By no doubt wondering about the human connection to Nature and social protocols of communication.
In Hartman´s work, we guess an invitation to ask ourselves about our relationship to the proliferation of electronic devices that exist on and around the human body. Her art objects are a playful invitation to reinvent how we communicate with others, among ourselves, and to the world around us.