SERIES RETRATO DE FAMILIA, 2011-2022

México, D.F.: Laura Anderson Barbata, 2022. Type C printing on photo paper. NOTE: All in a linen covered box-folder, which opens at the top like a door or a window that was handmade in Mexico. This is a numbered limited edition of 3 copies, plus 2 Artist Proofs and one Exhibition Copy. LIMITED EDITION OF 3. Laura Anderson Barbata (Mexico 1958) is a transdisciplinary artist born in Mexico City who lives and works between New York and Mexico City. In this series, the book "Retrato de Familia", the photographs by Lourdes Almeida, (which aims to make an exhaustive photographic record of the "Mexican family") have been completely intervened by cutting out all the sides of the book. The result was large color images where absence plays a leading role in the portrait, showing what is behind each of the people and revealing the complexity of each of the stories. The images are the result of a search for a faithful portrait. Each photo in the series is made up of several cut-out pages, and then they are photographed to make a new portrait. Laura Anderson Barbata since 1992 has initiated long-term projects and collaborations in the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Norway, and the United States that address social justice and the environment. Her work often combines performance, procession, dance, music, textile arts, costuming, papermaking, zines and protest. Some of Lourdes Almeida's works reveal that her work has an important dose of documentary photography. In the emblematic series "Family Portrait", her most recent book, she addresses migration and the border. She was a student of the "Charlas de Otoño" workshop taught by Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Since 1978, she has had 100 solo exhibitions in important museums in Mexico, Latin America, the United States, Europe, and Asia. She has participated in more than 300 collective exhibitions around the world. She is considered the master of experimental Polaroid photography in Mexico. “Since 1994, Laura Anderson Barbata has worked on self portraits in which her head and face have been removed in order to expand the reading of the self by reducing the importance of facial features. In these series, Barbata has worked with the book “Retratos de Familia” (with photographs by Lourdes Almeida) -a work that attempts to make and exhaustive photographic register of “Mexican families”- by carefully cutting all faces out of the book. Each photo of the series is composed of several pages that have been cut, after which they are photographed to create a new portrait. The resulting images permit absence to play an integral role in the portrait, showing us the complexities of each individual life story. They are the search of a true portrait.” –sheet mounted in left inner flap. (Inventory #: 120767)