AND ALL THE OTHERS
 
26.04 / 10.06.2018
MNAV
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF VISUAL ARTS
MONTEVIDEO
URUGUAY

PHOTOS: EDUARDO BALDIZÁN Y MATÍAS GANDUGLIA 

Despite her youth, artist Elián Stolarsky (Montevideo, 1990) has an exceptionally productive activity, with a strong projection in the local and international milieus. She has traveled a formative path –that has not stopped– in which multiple inspirations mutually reinforce each other towards plastic art discoveries, but which also has included incursions in the areas of philosophy, literature, theater and dance. The whole of her creation finds a symbiosis of interests that are intertwined in a persistent and rigorous manner, through experimentation with different technical and material media, especially in printmaking, drawing and painting, but also increasingly incorporating animation and textile art. Her work attests to constant research (accompanied by personal-emotional search) in which she connects to her generational history, linking multiple moments that she considers her own: especially in relation to her country of birth and to the origin of her immigrant relatives. This sense of identity affiliation is especially focused on the stupor caused by the Holocaust, and the terrible events that took place during the Second World War. The tragedy of genocide, the destruction during the war and its multiple consequences are apparent in much of her production. From her pervasive reflection about the past, the artist would seem to aim to encompass all wars, all the disappeared populations, all the deportees, all kinds of extermination.

Y todos los otros (And all the others), her present solo exhibition at the mnav, consists of three spaces differentiated by technical procedure (drawings, tapestries, installation animations), which in a visually austere manner make up an integrated whole by its theme and its contemporary technical research. Over one hundred artworks are displayed, mostly made between 2015 and 2017, years of intense study and production. During this three-year period, the artist completed her Master's degree at the KASK Conservatorium in Gent, Belgium (2015-2016); the internship at Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp, Belgium (2015- 2016); and the residence at Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, Spain (2017).

María Eugenia Grau
Curator 


The exhibition y todos los otros (and all others) - Elián Stolarsky is the first individual exhibition by the artist at the National Museum of Visual Arts (mnav). She had previously exhibited collectively in this museum in the framework of the 2013 Paul Cézanne Award, where her work Inventario cuarta parte 2014 (Inventory fourth part 2014) (a site-specific installation) was awarded First Prize unanimously by the jury. If only four years ago, Elián's work stood out among young Uruguayan talent —which was the focus of the competition organized by the Embassy of France in Uruguay—, nowadays she fully confirms her place among the valuable artists that are part of our best contemporary art.

Elián Stolarsky together with the curator of the exhibition, María Eugenia Grau, have developed a large-scale project. This is not only because of the numerous works on display (more than a hundred), but because of the use of techniques and supports that she has mastered and which she compels to align with the topics that interest her the most. In this way the drawings, tapestries and animations make up a large installation in Room 4 of the mnav addressing the issues of war, violence and destruction as dark facets of the human condition, questioning in turn the status of the image and its power to represent reality.

The image that seduces us with its high resolution may not reflect the truth; what is more, it may conceal it. Maybe it is in the folds of the broken image —barely glimpsed from the abstraction or created with some simple strokes— that the mirror quality is achieved to help us wonder who we are and what we have become in terms of occupying our place in the current world. In the exhibition y todos los otros - Elián Stolarsky there are no images to distract us allowing us to evade, to spectacularize the pain. The different pieces of the artist have the common characteristic of recovering a significant gaze that we do not find in the imposing and super produced media imagery of today.

Elián Stolarsky produces artwork that refuses to forget a past that involves us; she assumes that commitment and invites us to reflect on how to move forward: together.

Enrique Aguerre

Director of the National Museum of Visual Arts


BACK