COVA MACÍAS AND SUSANA BLAS

Documentary project consisting of a series of portraits of sixteen young people living in Paris, particularly the 19th district. One after the other, as part of a one-to-one conversation, these young people reveal key aspects of the construction of their identities, while at the same time reflecting on concepts such as the family, education, otherness, foreigners, stigma and codes of difference.   To mark the presentation of La Révolte Intime, the encounter From identities in transit to visual anthropology will take place: a conversation between the artist Cova Macías and the video creation specialist Susana Blas: Imbued with a surprising serenity, the teenage protagonists of La Révolte Intime reveal biographical episodes inviting reflection on concerns affecting contemporary identity, such as rootlessness following migratory journeys, the need for acceptance within the group and capacity to withstand extreme psychological situations. La Révolte Intime is the video result of careful preliminary interaction work with a group of teenagers from the 19th district of Paris. For months, the artist built up an atmosphere among the young people of collective exchanges of trust and personal references. This was the seed for the final video, made in a deliberately austere form, in which we see fragments of the leading figures’ stories interwoven.   During the Macías-Blas conversation, which is open to the public, as well as commenting on her latest work, the artist will reveal some keys to the least-known part of her projects: the preliminary dynamics she works on before filming and the literary and film references that inspire her. In the words of Susana Blas: “If we talk about intimacy and autobiography in the 21st century, it is not difficult to imagine that we will allude to the continuing diffusion of privacy generated by the Internet and the social networks; however, there is nothing further from Cova than these devices. The artist can boast of working with imperishable tools, such as conversation and some film or literary quotes. We will also talk about the development of the topics covered in her work, which, based on her interest in adolescence as a metaphor for identities in transit, has matured into territory closer to visual anthropology, with an increasingly social tone, such as the idea of “foreign-ness”, the different models of family, and subjects’ capacity for “resilience”, among other issues.”   Cova Macías (Oviedo 1976). Her artistic work of the last eight years examines how young people represent themselves and construct their identity in relation to the environment that surrounds them. She works on video, exploring this territory intimately, creating a series of portraits of these young protagonists and collaborators. She has produced projects as artist in residence at institutions like Hangar, Le Pavillon, the artistic creation laboratory of the Palais de Tokyo, Frankfurter Kunstverein and others. Among her individual exhibitions, the following should be highlighted: Encounters, Modern Art Oxford's Lower Gallery, Oxford (2009) and Horses in my dreams, Ten Reasons to be a Member-Space, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt. (2009). This year she is taking part in the International Encounter Medellín, MDE11.   Susana Blas Brunel (Madrid, 1969) is a contemporary art historian specialising in audiovisual creation. She is currently a script writer on the TV culture programme Metrópolis (TVE2). She writes in various publications about video, gender issues and modern art and has given workshops and lectures on these subjects. She has curated cycles and exhibitions of video art: Vídeos XX (Photoespaña, 2002), Adolescentes (Reina Sofía Museum, 2003), Vete a tu habitación (La Casa Encendida. Madrid, 2003), EL: ¿nuevos masculinos? (Sala Juan Francés. Zaragoza, 2006), Disparos eléctricos. Vídeo y Feminismo (Centro Cultural Montehermoso. Vitoria, 2007), El viaje dislocado (MARCO. Vigo, 2007), Sonrisas y Lágrimas (Centro Torrente Ballester. Ferrol, 2010), Fábulas Problemáticas (Antigua Tabacalera. Madrid, 2011), among other projects. Since 2004 she has regularly curated video art at La Casa Encendida in the Videomix section. Among her more recent projects is Mundo aparte: nuevo videoclip español (2009-2011), produced by the Instituto Cervantes.

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