FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHY AND MEMORY. ARTIST WORKSHOP MAR CALDAS

A photograph of someone with whom we share an emotional bond is always bound to raise questions…In this workshop, we will be working with family photographs, looking at them carefully, recapturing their context, scrutinising the details, concentrating on what is there as well as what is not. We will look beyond the image in close detail, looking at the back, the margins, the creases, the folds or the inscriptions. We will be looking for revelations, stories untold, family secrets, snippets of memories. We will be looking for answers to these questions by resorting to our memory or the memory of our family members, and maybe also by trawling documentary records for information. We will fill the gaps in memory with imagination, creativity, devising hypotheses, putting ourselves in the place of the person in the photograph. We will write texts to accompany the images, describing them, translating them, making them talk, giving a voice to what is unsaid, in short, bringing them back to life.

The perception we have of our family photographs changes over time. Along with the emotional discoveries, with these micro-stories of ordinary men and women, we will be able to create commemorations for public use. We are going to install the images and texts we have created in Bonaval park, covering the niches in the old cemetery. The intervention in this place will change the functions of the images: by taking them out of their normal environment, to the purpose of personal memorials that photography served within the family, we will be adding a different—commemorative, social and perhaps even political—purpose. The frame of this monumental cemetery will provide a solemn background for the images and stories related while also magnifying the potential of the family photographs, awakening feelings of identification and empathy in those looking at them.

LED BY

MAR CALDAS (Vigo, 1964) has received artistic creation grants such as Nuevos Valores (Provincial Council of Pontevedra, 1992), VI Fotobienal (Vigo City Council, 1993), Pilar Juncosa i Sotherby (Miró de Mallorca Foundation, 1996), Unión Fenosa (A Coruña, 1999) and Arte y Derecho Foundation (Madrid, 2000). Herwork has formed a part of exhibitions on gender and review of feminist practices such as A arte inexistente. As artistas galegas do século XX (Auditorium of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, 1995), Marxes e mapas. A creación de xénero en Galicia (Auditorium of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, 2008), Genealogías feministas en él arte español, 1960-2010 (MUSAC, León, 2012), Alén dos xéneros. Prácticas artísticas feministas en Galicia (MARCO, Vigo, and Auditorium of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, 2017), Women in Work. Mujer, arte y trabajo en la globalización (UPV, Valencia, and UJI, Castellón, 2017) and Coidados, vulnerabilidades e dependencias. Olladas desde os feminismos (Lugo Museum Network, 2022).

TARGET GROUPS

The workshop has been devised for artists, students of Fine Arts and similar disciplines, Art teachers and, in general, any adult interested in contemporary art.

REGISTRATION

The period for enrolment on the workshop course will be open from 20 December 2024 to 22 January 2025.

Those interested can enrol by sending an email to the following address: cgac.pedagogia@xunta.gal and including the following information: name and surname(s), Nat. Id. No., field of work or interest, and contact email address and telephone number. Applications should also include a cover letter and a short resumé of the applicant.

Once the application has been accepted, those enrolled will receive the instructions necessary to complete the enrolment process.

MATERIAL

The CGAC will provide the material necessary for carrying out the activity. Even so, we would recommend that participants bring a laptop with image processing software installed, such as Photoshop or a similar programme.

CERTIFICATE

The CGAC will issue a certificate to all those who have attended at least 75% of the sessions.