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The rage of devotion

Liza Ambrossio

2016 - 2018

México, Mexico

Text:

Some time ago I decided to change my life in the most extraordinary way possible. I looked in and without intending it I remembered the phrase with which my mother said goodbye the last time I saw her at sixteen years old - "I wish you well, and believe me I hope you´ll become strong and brave, so you can be merciless when the time comes to destroy your body and crush your soul the next time we see each other"- After an overwhelming emotional breakdown, I started this series of images intermingling with pictorial canvases and photographs of my family archive to impel the observer to immerse themselves in my psychology

I stumble, but in the same way freeing myself, finding their lascivious looks, my fear of touch and the instinctive repulsion that represents for me the concept of "family". In "The rage of devotion" I discover that although I look, I don´t want to see, because what lives inside me, looks and it is completely monstrous.

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• I am a being led by demons. After leaving home at sixteen I decided never to return to the family home, but I needed a powerful symbolic connection with my Mother. To acquire the old photo file that I included in my project, I spoke with the housekeeper of my mother's house to steal the images of the old family albums while I paid for them during my student years between high school and university.

•The project is developed for many years of my adolescence to my adult age, it is a real mental journey that relates the forms of survival through which I went to build myself and the work.

• All my night images are photographed in the early hours when I worked for the police press or “Mexican red note” when I had just left my mother's house. In them I discovered that all the chaos that was inside me was also the trace of the chaos that it was outside of me. In my country there is a war that is not talked about, and I started to face a war against the machismo exercised by the women of my family towards me. As for medical images or strange diseases such as -double iris in the eye-, are the consequence of my obsession with medicine and my almost four years of dedication to a specialist doctor of rare diseases of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) ). The texts that accompany my work are a syncretic construction based on instants of the reality of my life (flashbacks).

• In my project "The rage of devotion" the symbol of the spider (hands, draws, etc.) means the woman who does not conform to social rules and lives outside the social structure.

• The constant trimming of the legs in "The rage of devotion" has an ancient relationship with the Mexican indigenous imagery. I let myself become "The Nahual" who is a type of Mexican witch with the ability to kill for revenge. To kill for revenge requires cutting her legs in a violent way, hiding her legs in their house. Then it takes the shape of an animal like a crow, a wolf or a dog. Kill the person who has displeased him and to return to his human form he puts on his legs again and recovers completely without raising any suspicion of having been responsible for the death of someone. I decide to kill my relationship with the family, cultural, religious, gender (…) structure.

• I have a strong relationship with ancient spirituality, inherent in all human beings, but forgotten due to the fear of connecting with others and excessive capitalism. I think that when your angels abandon you, your demons come to help you and maybe I think it is likely that the dark side we all have is more important in the construction of personality than what culture and social structures It force to be.

• The images lose control of their position and vertical become horizontal or the characters get upside down because they have a magical and perverse meaning within the universe of Mexican witchcraft. It is to wish death to the characters that were photographed.

www.lizaambrossio.com

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  • Self-portrait with the face in the water. Water becomes my work in a mirror shape that allows memory to cross.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • Being Mexican, I have a cultural obsession with death. For four years I dedicate myself to photographing dead children in Mexico City, while accompanying a doctor to perform different investigations.

    Many of my images lose control of their position and vertical become horizontal or the characters get upside down because they have a magical and perverse meaning within the universe of Mexican witchcraft. It is to wish death to the characters that were photographed.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • The constant trimming of the legs in "The rage of devotion" has an ancient relationship with the Mexican indigenous imagery. I let myself become "The Nahual" who is a type of Mexican witch with the ability to kill for revenge. To kill for revenge requires cutting her legs in a violent way, hiding her legs in their house. Then it takes the shape of an animal like a crow, a wolf or a dog. Kill the person who has displeased him and to return to his human form he puts on his legs again and recovers completely without raising any suspicion of having been responsible for the death of someone. I decide to kill my relationship with the family, cultural, religious, gender (…) structure.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • Self-portrait intervened with mascara on my silhouette. I have a strong relationship with ancient spirituality, inherent in all human beings, but forgotten due to the fear of connecting with others and excessive capitalism. I think that when your angels abandon you, your demons come to help you and maybe I think it is likely that the dark side we all have is more important in the construction of personality than what culture and social structures It force to be.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • I mixed the demonic as a form of freedom with the concept of cursed childhood that I find in paintings while making mental and real journeys.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • The snails are the representation of the temptations in many Mexican indigenous cultures and some areas of Africa.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • The personality masks are drawn throughout my project, as gestures of madness.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • The Nahual lurks.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • The desire to be born of a man is represented by the figure of a dead child and the swollen belly of a man of my father's age if he were alive.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • This image is the testimony of the death of my great-grandfather. In the image, all women act as witches, powerful and elevated. While men are afraid. They are performing a post-mortem ritual. The man's hands are tied with a black ribbon to keep him from coming back from beyond. And so they can be free to make a new life.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • "I wish you well, and believe me I hope you´ll become strong and brave, so you can be merciless when the time comes to destroy your body and crush your soul the next time we see each other"- Mother
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • All my night images are photographed in the early hours when I worked for the police press or “Mexican red note” when I had just left my mother’s house. In them I discovered that all the chaos that was inside me was also the trace of the chaos that it was outside of me. In my country there is a war that is not talked about, and I started to face a war against the machismo exercised by the women of my family towards me.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • All my night images are photographed in the early hours when I worked for the police press or “Mexican red note” when I had just left my mother’s house. In them I discovered that all the chaos that was inside me was also the trace of the chaos that it was outside of me. In my country there is a war that is not talked about, and I started to face a war against the machismo exercised by the women of my family towards me.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • As for medical images or strange diseases such as -double iris in the eye-, are the consequence of my obsession with medicine and my almost four years of dedication to a specialist doctor of rare diseases.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • The image rests on the heads because it represents the death wish of the people in the image. This is the portrait of my grandparents' wedding, she was fourteen years old, thirty and sadness invades the scene.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • The demons persecute me and I them.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • Ambrotype of the family album that represents the desire to destroy a woman from my family to another.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • My hands become spiders, which represent the desire not to belong to structures.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • Witchcraft and madness live in my mind in equal parts.
    © Liza Ambrossio

  • All my night images are photographed in the early hours when I worked for the police press or “Mexican red note” when I had just left my mother’s house. In them I discovered that all the chaos that was inside me was also the trace of the chaos that it was outside of me. In my country there is a war that is not talked about, and I started to face a war against the machismo exercised by the women of my family towards me.
    © Liza Ambrossio

The rage of devotion

Liza Ambrossio

2016 - 2018

México, Mexico

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