02.03.24 –
20.04.24
Nocturno del agua
"What do H2O, baptisms and the bottom of the sea have in common? What is water independently of us? Can we purify something so central to our existence from projections? In her performance, Anna Dot proposes, not an answer, but something more valuable: an attitude. Perhaps the best way to learn is to sharpen our ears, to adopt a curious, tender and humble posture.
Anna's practice is imbricated in age-old social practices, whose geographical and temporal scope stretches from ancient Greece to Celtiberian cultures. These practices have in common the personification of entities generally considered inanimate in our days, thus questioning our modern, instrumental and self-interested relationship with water and, by extension, with nature.
Anna's questions (or incantations) are tender, intimate, insightful. The kind of questions you ask someone you don't know, but for whom you have an immediate sense of familiarity. For each question, Anna pours liquid tin into a container of water, where it solidifies - an allusion to the exercise of tossing a coin into a fountain to make a wish. Thus, the tin serves as a canvas for the water to convey her expression, the articulation of her answers.
The resulting figures / statues are intricate, elegant and elaborate. What do their [shiny] nooks and crannies mean? And if they mean / given that they mean, what does the rest mean? - The whistling of the leaves as they cut through the air, the refractions of light in the window, or even the circumference of coffee on the table as the cup is lifted. - The result is not only a democratisation of expression, but an implosion, or explosion, of the concept, revealing the infinite capacity of the world to say, to mean."
Guillermo Izquierdo, "El arte de preguntar/Pregúntaselo al agua" 2024.
Anna's practice is imbricated in age-old social practices, whose geographical and temporal scope stretches from ancient Greece to Celtiberian cultures. These practices have in common the personification of entities generally considered inanimate in our days, thus questioning our modern, instrumental and self-interested relationship with water and, by extension, with nature.
Anna's questions (or incantations) are tender, intimate, insightful. The kind of questions you ask someone you don't know, but for whom you have an immediate sense of familiarity. For each question, Anna pours liquid tin into a container of water, where it solidifies - an allusion to the exercise of tossing a coin into a fountain to make a wish. Thus, the tin serves as a canvas for the water to convey her expression, the articulation of her answers.
The resulting figures / statues are intricate, elegant and elaborate. What do their [shiny] nooks and crannies mean? And if they mean / given that they mean, what does the rest mean? - The whistling of the leaves as they cut through the air, the refractions of light in the window, or even the circumference of coffee on the table as the cup is lifted. - The result is not only a democratisation of expression, but an implosion, or explosion, of the concept, revealing the infinite capacity of the world to say, to mean."
Guillermo Izquierdo, "El arte de preguntar/Pregúntaselo al agua" 2024.
Anna Dot
(Vic, 1991) lives and works between Barcelona and Torelló. She is dedicated to artistic practice, through which she carries out various explorations of language. She has exhibited in different spaces in Barcelona and Tarragona, as well as in Mexico and Germany. She complements her artistic production with theoretical research at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Applied Languages of the University of Vic. She also writes art criticism for A*Desk and Encuentros and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in Torelló and at La Farinera in Vic. She is co-founder of the collectives Murió de Frío and Supterranis (organisers of the Festival Plaga) and member of the visual arts commission of the Festival Festus, Torelló.