28 days

I´m a visual artist from Argentina. My work revolves around recurrent topics: memory, death, womanhood, space, and nature. I collect and work with found images, objects and nature elements to draw physical connections between memory, history, and identity.

The French philosopher Pierre Nora explains the difference between memory and history. According to him, traditional memory has vanished: we are no longer capable of remembering unconsciously. Instead, we accumulate fragments, images, and documents from the past, with the intention of having evidence of that time that is gone. Memory is a living system: it is in constant evolution. We deform, manipulate, and revive those old events, places and people. Nora’s understanding of memory explains my fascination with old documents: I collect and work with found images, archive materials, objects and nature elements to draw physical connections between memory, history, and identity.

Who were these people? Why are their photos on sale in remote vintage stores? What happened to them, to their families? Are they dead? Did they ever exist?

"28 Days" is a project by the artist Lara Mossler in which she invited me to explore my hormonal cycle. By following a guided meditation designed to help us look for a connection between the flow of our hormones and their influences on our feelings and ways of thinking, I produced 28 photo collages, one per day during a complete cycle, in response to the introspections that originated in the daily meditation.

In "28 Days", I explore the fictionalizing quality of memory by choosing women from those forgotten images, and by transposing them from their original environments through the use of diverse collage techniques to ambiguous territories located somewhere in between time and space. These hybrid compositions re-signify old memories by staging symbolic representations which materialize my personal understanding of womanhood, memory, death, and nature.

© Leticia Bernaus - Ground. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016
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Ground. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016

© Leticia Bernaus - Wayout into space. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016
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Wayout into space. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016

© Leticia Bernaus - The God of war. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016
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The God of war. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016

© Leticia Bernaus - Mare Tranquillitatis. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016
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Mare Tranquillitatis. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016

© Leticia Bernaus - Slow Motion. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016
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Slow Motion. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016

© Leticia Bernaus - Pensé en el mar. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016
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Pensé en el mar. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016

© Leticia Bernaus - I saw geometric shapes. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016
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I saw geometric shapes. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016

© Leticia Bernaus - Doppelganger. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016
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Doppelganger. From the Series "28 Days". Photomontage. 2016

28 days by Leticia Bernaus

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