LIMA PHOTO 2012

The Villa Manuela Gallery, of the Cuban Writers and Artists Union (UNEAC), participated in the Fair Lima Photo along with other 26 exhibition spaces, among which there were 9 from Peru and 18 belonging to Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Cuba, Spain and United States. Of the total, about 50% are specialized in the photography field and the rest market works of diverse expressions and trends, as Villa Manuela. Sandra Contreras and Vivian Companioni traveled to Lima with several Cuban artists’ works to explore for the first time this unique specialized event.

Lima Photo, attended by more than ten thousand people for four days in August, also developed an interesting cultural program including portfolios presentation, panel discussions and book launches. Led by Gaston Deleau (also Director of the ArteBA Fair, from Buenos Aires), who received support from Diego Costa (Director of the PINTA NY Fair), and sponsored by the El Comercio newspaper and the auspices of  the Image Center this private character Fair does not aspire to grow more, in both exhibition space and the number of participating galleries, since it appears that, for now, the important thing is to place the photo in the vast visual panorama along with painting and other expressions of large tradition, and promote the interest in this event by established and emerging collectors, who are growing increasingly, to a certain boom and economic expansion in the Andean country.

To know this Fair’s scopewe talk with Vivian Companioni...

At what was due this first Villa Manuela Gallery’s for ayin avery special space art and the contemporary market?

In the last ArtBo Fair in Colombia, we established contacts with gallery owners who had participated in previous editions of Lima Photo and in other Fairs in the region;and we were specially suggested to participate in this third edition considering the existing knowledge, to international level, on the strength and vigor of  the Cuban art, including photography, of course. We immediately sent a dossier with works by Cuban artists recognized as photographers, and others who rely on photography to prepare their today speeches. The response was positive: from there we prepared ourselves to make a selection according to that interest.

Who joined this selection?

Obviously few people because, first of all, it was a space problem. The Fair has limited physical dimensions with no possibility of increasing them right now. Hence, we should be careful with the amount of creators and the type of work to send. We chose Ernesto Fernandez (National Prize of Plastic Arts 2011), René Peña, Aimee Garcia, Mabel Poblet, Marianela Orozco, Adonis Flores, Ernesto Javier Fernandez and Roberto Diago. Among them some are better known for other types of expression but they have also used photography with great imagination and talent, and that’s why we selected them to participate in the fair.Diago, for example, makes a very creative use of light boxes since 2003; Aimee performs canvas-graphias with photographic base, and then she participates, as a painter and objective-orientedt hat she is.

We were struck by the number of Cuban artists who are relying on photography as a singular means of expression. There is evaluation of this expression in Cuban art, which leadstonew paths. I think Jorge Lopez Pardo, Carlos Montes de Oca, Ernesto Rancaño, Reynier Leyva, attracted by the possibilitiesof new technologies and by the objectual that their results can be, not only planes, two-dimensional, to which we have been traditionally used.

Which was the image projected by the Fair, dedicated solely to photography?

The fairground was the area in which the Image Center is located, in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima. The twenty-seven galleries were distributed in similar areas with a predomination of the panels, in which the photos were displayed. Almost all the photos were shown in walls except us that we proposed objects, as the case of Ernesto Javier photos, whose neon were very innovative in that planimetric context, just like the intervened images of Aimee Garcia.

Most werecolor photos with a tendency towards surrealism, towards photomontages with decorative colors; and muchportrait, also nudes, all of them based on the digital,with some exceptions of images taken in black and white. They actually pointed to collectors, there are not many in Peru, but an upper middle class, rich, is emerging and wanting to buy works, to acquire a certain status through the art. Those who have always bought paintings also want to buy photographies now. This is the only Fair that there is in Peru; such is not the case of Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, with significant experience in this regard. This edition of Lima Photo have excited them so much that they are thinking to hold the first Art Fair in the country for April 2013, with international character: PARC will be called, and it will be located at the Contemporary Art Museum, in Barranco. There will be a discussion forum and Awards. There were also curiosities like photos of Julio Le Parc And as a significant fact, a number of works by Robert Mapplethorpe, which were entirely sold.

Do you think this kind of event promotes and powers the photography in the region, even though its spirit is eminently commercial?

In a way it does. Many works interested by their risk, by its experimental nature: it’s just a matter of evaluate in each edition what this confrontation gives to photography as an expression. It is a conclusive fact that people acquire pictures to keep, to display in their homes, and to collect.That was not the case before. There are issues that may not work in this kind of market; the epic photography, for example, so important in the second half of last century. Social issues do work in general, everything that has to do with life today.

Gradually people are educated on the progress and changes in the artistic fact. The interesting thing is the confrontation, and to listen to all kinds of opinions. Our photograph caught a great attention: most people could not imagine that so many different things could be done with that expression. Of course, all the exhibited photos had an optimum degree of completion, formal quality, which is something that the public feels, thanks, not only in this expression but art in general.

Right now we are currently visiting the Houston Festival to assess new opportunities for participation, because this festival is one of the most important in the world: all that is beneficial to the creation, promotion and diffusion of our expressions. We must not miss any opportunity.