Gloria Oyarzabal
Spanish visual artist
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Gloria Oyarzabal (born 1971)[1] is a Spanish visual artist and teacher who works in photography and cinema.[2] She was the co-founder of the Independent Cinema “La Enana Marrón” (The Brown Dwarf) in Madrid (1999–2009), a theater that showcased films d'auteur and "experimental and alternative cinema."[3][4] She is the winner of several international photography awards and prizes.
Early life
Oyarzabal was born in London.[2] She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Complutense University Madrid[2] and a Master’s degree from the Blank Paper School of Photography, Madrid.[3][5] Oyarzabal lived in Mali for three years, researching "the ideal of Africa that Europe has created for its own benefit".[6]
Career
In 2016, Oyarzabal created a "docu-fiction" photography collection centred on Sir John Everett Millais's Ophelia, which was featured in The Huffington Post.[7] She views Ophelia as the ultimate symbol of women's oppression.[7] Speaking about her work in this series Oyarzabal said "I feel satisfied if I can convey this idea of oppression, anxiety, and the breathlessness of some women".[7]
In 2017, Oyarzabal won the Landskrona Foto Dummy Award for her project The Picnolepsy of Tshombé.[8] After being displayed at the Landskrona Foto Festival, the newly renamed Picnos Tshombé photobook went on to be presented and published in Arles, gaining international recognition.[8]
in September 2018, Oyarzabal's work has been featured in the Vevey open-air photography festival, in Switzerland .[9] This work, Pink Girl, Woman go no'gree, was also re-produced in The Guardian in 2019.[9] Oyarzabal's work focuses on the Yoruba people, looking into evidence showing that their original society was not gendered.[9] Her project Woman go no'gree questions the application of notions of gender in western feminism to different cultures which function differently.[9]
In 2020, Oyarzabal was Highly Commended for the Bartur Photo Award in the COVID-19 Reflections series.[10]
In 2020, Oyarzabal was the winner of aperture PhotoBook of the Year for Woman go no'gree.[11] The book explores colonialism and white feminism through the use of found images and archives from West Africa and her own photographs.[11] Farah Maakel writes in The Art Momentum, "She worked from the perspective of an artist and not an academic, nor an anthropologist, nor a writer, and her position as a white European woman here is the keystone of her work. In fact, instead of daring to use the voice of the so-called Other, she uses her voice as a translation of her own gaze onto the other – especially the western construction of the concept of women."[12] A review in the photography magazine Conscientious states, "The viewer is made to look at women living in Africa in a variety of ways, and the overall feeling is one of self-determination: these women neither need colonial administrators to tell them what to do nor contemporary men from their own or any other culture."[13]
Works
- Woman go no'gree, RM/Vevey Images, 2021. ISBN 978-84-17975-28-9[14][15]
Awards
- 2017 Landskrona Foto Dummy Award[8]
- 2018 Encontros da Imagem Discovery Award[16]
- 2019 Images Vevey Dummy Award[17]
- 2019 PHOTO IS:RAEL Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography[18]
- 2019 Grand Prix Fotofestiwal[19]
- 2020 aperture Portfolio Prize Runner-Up[3]
- 2020 aperture PhotoBook of the Year[11][20]