Antonia Bañados – Emerging Artist of the Week

Our Emerging Artist of the Week is Antonia Bañados:

What are you working on right now?

I just finished a solo show in called Guidelines for Chaos, which is a series of paper works and installation of glass and ceramic pieces simulating the exploration of an alternative landscape. Now I’m going prepared another show for the Geological Museum of Lisbon, working with the estructure of a museum collection but in this time using the observation of drops of water, and the submersion of solids into water as a subject of study. It’ll be called Tsupu, which is a Quechua word. Also I’m starting to experiment with narrative and making tests with animation and the shape of comic for creating sequences, movements and the suggestions of events.

What is your art about?

My work explores the perception of the temporal and spatial scale through the relationship between natural phenomena (for example astronomical or geological) with events or objects of our next reality. Like that the impact of falling a drop of water can be homologated with the formation of a picture, rain with the formation of a landscape, and an accumulation of pieces with a decay of a metropolis in the process of becoming ruins.

I investigate visual strategies that dialogue with the limits of scientific objectivity, through the use of aquariums, traditional techniques of sculpture, and their registration and transfer to film language for the creation of spaces or habitable systems.

Do you find your immediate surrounding inspirational?

I usually gets most of my ideas by walking on the street or in my daily life experience. I’m very attracted by the way cities are constructed and different types of and details of architecture, and their relation with nature. In that sense travels to other countries and cities are the most stimulating as I need to decode an other language in a way.

Which artists or what kind of art has the greatest impact on your work?

There’s lot of artists that have a great impact on me, but I really love the work of the french artist Pierre Huyghe. He works with videos and aquarium and living installations. I also got really impressed by the work of the duo Janet Cardiff and George Miller, they also work with installations that deal with different mediums (cinema, theatre, mobiles, etc) , you can enter them sometimes and get inside of the experience. There is a series of painter that I love. I think the watercolours of the duo “Los Carpinteros” are fantastic, as well as the pencil drawings of Paul Noble.

How does the internet influence your way of working as an artist?

I think the internet influence me in different levels: on one hand it is a massive help to access to images that later I use as reference or as a stating point for a work. Also stories that serve as inspiration. On the other hand, sometimes the feedback that you can get though the media presence can modify you perception of the work, for good or bad. Everything now has a virtual presence a work continues further ahead from its physical exhibition.

Discover more works by Antonia Bañados.