Gema Polanco

Caring for the Feeling is a celebration, a grand party about the importance of personal processes, of not covering them up and of giving them their space in order to appreciate their meaning.  Working with one’s own baggage to get closer to why we have these fears, insecurities and reactions. A textile installation guided by mobiles with the outlines of tears, eye shadows, sockets, despairing screams, spontaneous outbreaks of laughter and complicit conversations between friends that sustain you, referring you to the need for self-knowledge, to navigate the processes so that new, honest, accessible and peaceful forms of care may be possible.

In Caring for the Feeling, Gema Polanco invites you to dig a hole for sadness and whatever it is that paralyses you in order not to flee and inhabit it; “if we don’t, how are we going to understand one another? How are we going to look after one another? How are we going to care for one another from new places at the same time as we build other imaginaries? Trust. Trust in movement” is what the artist suggests.

Gema Polanco (Valencia 1992)

She holds a degree in Photography at the London College of Communication (London, 2015), a postgraduate degree in Master PhotoEspaña (Madrid, 2016) and a Master’s Degree in Visual Arts and Education at the UB (Barcelona, 2017).

Her work has been exhibited in such festivals as Circulation(s) in Paris, PhotoEspaña, PhotoAlicante, Art Nou, Loop Barcelona and the Miami New Media Festival.

She has recently exhibited her project As God Commands (Como Dios Manda) in the Sala Kursala in Cadiz and at the Alalimón Gallery in Barcelona. She has formed part of the exhibition Art al Magatzem Dones. Retòriques de Poder i Utopies del Desig (Lerida) and she has published As God Commands.

She is currently participating in the The Ark (El Arca) exhibition at the Condeduque Centre for Contemporary Culture (Madrid) curated by Pia Ogea and in the recently closed Right Now: Everything is Yet to be Done and All is Possible (Ahora Mismo: Todo Está por Hacer y Todo Posible) curated by Chus Martinez and Rosa LLeó in Arts Santa Mónica (Barcelona).