Valentina Navarrete I Barba

Valentina Navarrete I Barba (°1981, Santiago De Chile, Chile) is an artist who works in a variety
of media. By creating situations and breaking the passivity of the spectator, Navarrete I Barba
plays with the idea of the mortality of an artwork confronted with the power of a transitory
appearance, which is, by being restricted in time, much more intense.
Her artworks are presented with the aim not to provide an idealistic view but to identify where
light and the environment are important. The energy of a place and its emotional and spiritual
vibrations are always important. By investigating language on a meta-level, she considers
making art a craft which is executed using clear formal rules and which should always refer to
social reality.
Her works are a drawn reflection upon the art of art itself: thoroughly self-referential, yet no less
aesthetically pleasing, and therefore deeply inscribed in the history of modernism – made
present most palpably in the artist’s exploration of some of the most hallowed of modernist
paradigms. By merging several seemingly incompatible worlds into a new universe, she often
creates work using creative game tactics, but these are never permissive. Play is a serious
matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects
undergo transubstantiation.
Her works are based on inspiring situations: visions that reflect a sensation of indisputability
and serene contemplation, combined with subtle details of odd or eccentric, humoristic
elements. By using popular themes such as sexuality, family structure and violence, she often
creates several practically identical works, upon which thoughts that have apparently just been
developed are manifested: notes are made and then crossed out again, ‘mistakes’ are
repeated.
Her work urge us to renegotiate art as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium,
commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society. By studying sign processes,
signification and communication, she makes work that generates diverse meanings.
Associations and meanings collide. Space becomes time and language becomes image.
Her works bear strong political references. The possibility or the dream of the annulment of a
(historically or socially) fixed identity is a constant focal point. With Plato’s allegory of the cave
in mind, she tries to develop forms that do not follow logical criteria, but are based only on
subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make new personal
associations.
Her collected, altered and own works are being confronted as aesthetically resilient,
thematically interrelated material for memory and projection. The possible seems true and the
truth exists, but it has many faces, as Hanna Arendt cites from Franz Kafka. By applying a
poetic and often metaphorical language, she uses references and ideas that are so integrated
into the process of the composition of the work that they may escape those who do not take
the time to explore how and why these images haunt you, like a good film, long after you’ve
seen them.
Her works directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences
from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in
their original context. By choosing mainly formal solutions, she uses a visual vocabulary that
addresses many different social and political issues. The work incorporates time as well as
space – a fictional and experiential universe that only emerges bit by bit.
Her works are notable for their perfect finish and tactile nature. This is of great importance and
bears witness to great craftsmanship. By manipulating the viewer to create confusion, she
touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be
recognised, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition,
provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations.
Her works focus on the inability of communication which is used to visualise reality, the attempt
of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content and the dysfunctions of language. In
short, the lack of clear references are key elements in the work. By contesting the division
between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, she tries to approach a wide scale
of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes
physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a work.
Her works are based on formal associations which open a unique poetic vein. Multilayered
images arise in which the fragility and instability of our seemingly certain reality is questioned.
By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle
class values, she tries to create works in which the actual event still has to take place or just
has ended: moments evocative of atmosphere and suspense that are not part of a narrative
thread. The drama unfolds elsewhere while the build-up of tension is frozen to become the
memory of an event that will never take place.
Her works isolate the movements of humans and/or objects. By doing so, new sequences are
created which reveal an inseparable relationship between motion and sound. By replaying the
work for each exhibition and pushing the evocative power of the work a little further, she
creates with daily, recognizable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is
confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased
position.
Her works question the conditions of appearance of an image in the context of contemporary
visual culture in which images, representations and ideas normally function. By applying a wide
variety of contemporary strategies, her works references post-colonial theory as well as the
avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of
resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.
Her works never shows the complete structure. This results in the fact that the artist can easily
imagine an own interpretation without being hindered by the historical reality. By rejecting an
objective truth and global cultural narratives, she creates intense personal moments masterfully
created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and
round in circles.
Her works appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes
merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. With a
conceptual approach, she finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humour
that echoes our own vulnerabilities. The artist also considers movement as a metaphor for the
ever-seeking man who experiences a continuous loss.
Her works demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story
about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It
challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own
‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By examining the ambiguity and origination via retakes and
variations, she makes works that can be seen as self-portraits. Sometimes they appear
idiosyncratic and quirky, at other times, they seem typical by-products of American
superabundance and marketing.
Her works are made through strict rules which can be perceived as liberating constraints.
Romantic values such as ‘inspiration’, ‘genius’ and ‘authenticity’ are thereby neutralised and
put into perspective. Through a radically singular approach that is nevertheless inscribed in the
contemporary debate, she makes work that deals with the documentation of events and the
question of how they can be presented. The work tries to express this with the help of physics
and technology, but not by telling a story or creating a metaphor.
Her works are given improper functions: significations are inversed and form and content
merge. Shapes are dissociated from their original meaning, by which the system in which they
normally function is exposed. Initially unambiguous meanings are shattered and disseminate
endlessly. By focusing on techniques and materials, she wants to amplify the astonishment of
the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that
leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition and alienation.
Her works are on the one hand touchingly beautiful, on the other hand painfully attractive.
Again and again, the artist leaves us orphaned with a mix of conflicting feelings and thoughts.
By questioning the concept of movement, she tries to increase the dynamic between audience
and author by objectifying emotions and investigating the duality that develops through
different interpretations.
Her works are saturated with obviousness, mental inertia, clichés and bad jokes. They question
the coerciveness that is derived from the more profound meaning and the superficial aesthetic
appearance of an image. By parodying mass media by exaggerating certain formal aspects
inherent to our contemporary society, she tries to grasp language. Transformed into art,
language becomes an ornament. At that moment, lots of ambiguities and indistinctnesses,
which are inherent to the phenomenon, come to the surface.
Her works are characterised by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middleclass
mentality in which recognition plays an important role. By putting the viewer on the wrong
track, she absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. This personal follow-up
and revival of a past tradition is important as an act of meditation.
Her works are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages and situations
as well as depictions and ideas that can only be realized in art. By applying abstraction, she
wants the viewer to become part of the art as a kind of added component. Art is entertainment:
to be able to touch the work, as well as to interact with the work is important.
Her works often refers to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world
where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created. By demonstrating
the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, she tries to focus on the activity of presenting.
The character, shape or content of the presented artwork is secondary. The essential things are
the momentary and the intention of presenting.
Her works doesn’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent
that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. Valentina Navarrete I
Barba currently lives and works in Malalcahuello.