Gloria Oyarzabal

Gloria Oyarzabel is a Spanish artist photographer with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts (UCM), linked to the creation of and reflection on the image. She diversifies her professional activity between photography, audiovisual creation and teaching. Programmer and co-founder of Independent Cinema “La Enana Marrón”, Madrid (1999- 2009). She lived in Bamako (Mali) for three years, researching the construction of the Idea of Africa, imaginaries and stereotypes; processes of colonisation/decolonisation, new tactics of colonising through the mind (beauty canons, modernity concepts and religion) and African Feminisms. After her Master’s degree at Blankpaper (2014-15) her work has been shown at various festivals and biennials, and received prestigious awards and grants.

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Confronting object histories with postcolonial theories, shows how civilizatory discourses and tensions between empires, cultural dispossession and protection of cultural objects persist and are relevant. She is interested in links between cultural nationalisms and cosmopolitan views of cultural property, in the schizophrenic justification of looting in XIX century practices and its parallelism with contemporary practices. Colonialism was also a cultural project of control, driven by the scramble for curiosities, prestige, the appropriation of material culture and the production of imperial hierarchies, which enabled conquest. This entanglement is not only reflected in colonial violence, but also in sciences such as anthropology, circulation and trade of cultural objects or human remains, missionary activity, curatorial policies, knowledge production and photography. Ideally, Gloria would like to create an environment of listening and exchange around issues related to representation, starting from archival photography, sharing them in community and recovering stories and diverse voices around them that help to reflect on the present and the future from evocations, stories and ancestral traditions. She would like to get in touch with any local collective working around restitution and reparation. After years of researching these issues, she feels the need to move out of an introspective phase to create community around dialogue and listening.

https://gloriaoyarzabal.com/USUS-FRUCTUS-ABUSUS-LA-BLANCHE-ET-LA-NOIRE
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/955535821 PASSWORD: gloriaoyarzabal
https://gloriaoyarzabal.com/Usus-Fructus-Abusus-1
https://gloriaoyarzabal.com/RRR
https://gloriaoyarzabal.com/La-Blanche-et-la-Noire
https://gloriaoyarzabal.com/La-Imagen-Transportable
https://elysee.ch/en/editions/publications/gloria-oyarzabal/

The digital reflection titled DIDASCALÍA, created by Gloria Oyarzabal, resonates with and responds to the experiences gained during her one-month residency at Nubuke Foundation in Accra, Ghana. It not only reflects on the residency itself but also extends into the post-production phase, exploring the ongoing processes and transformations that follow the residency experience.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.