Graciela Iturbide – Shadow lines
From January 21 to April 2, 2023, Foundation A will host Shadow lines, the most complete exhibition in Belgium on the work of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, from the 1970s to the present. The exhibition gathers more than a hundred images, at the border of the everyday and the marvelous, and offers a new look at the work of the most renowned Latin American photographer, winner of the W. Eugene Smith (1987) and Hasselblad (2003) awards. Eugene Smith (1987) and Hasselblad (2008) awards.
From the portraits of women in Juchitán, which made her internationally known, to the Seri Indians of the Sonora desert, from the Naturata series, made in the botanical garden of Oaxaca, to the arid and depopulated feelings of the southern United States, Graciela Iturbide captures the magic in the ordinary.
Nature and animals, landscapes, strange or familiar objects, symbols, and traditions… The exhibition dedicated to her at the Fondation A covers all the research carried out by the artist during her travels, and reveals, in its multiple forms, the metaphysical link that unites the artist to her environment.
Through this exhibition, the Fondation A pursues its vocation of supporting the knowledge of the photographic image and participates in the influence of projects that question and enlighten our contemporary societies.
This exhibition curated by Alexis Fabry is part of the program of Photo Brussels Phestival.
About the Author
Graciela Iturbide was born in 1942 in Mexico City. In 1969 she enrolled at the age of 27 at the film school Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos at the Universidad Nacional Autónama de México to become a film director. However, she was soon drawn to the art of still photography as practiced by the Mexican modernist master Manuel Alvarez Bravo who was teaching at the University. From 1970-71 she worked as Bravo’s assistant, accompanying him on his various photographic journeys throughout Mexico.
In the early half of the 1970s, Iturbide traveled widely across Latin America in particular to Cuba and several trips to Panama.
In 1978 Iturbide was commissioned by the Ethnographic Archive of the National Indigenous Institute of Mexico to photograph Mexico’s indigenous population. Iturbide decided to document and record the way of life of the Seri Indians, a group of fisherman living a nomadic lifestyle in the Sonora desert in the north west of Mexico, along the border with Arizona, US. In 1979 she was invited by the artist Francisco Toledo to photograph the Juchitán people who form part of the Zapotec culture native to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Iturbide’s series that started in 1979 and runs through to 1988 resulted in the publication of her book Juchitán de las Mujeres in 1989. Between 1980 and 2000, Iturbide was variously invited to work in Cuba, East Germany, India, Madagascar, Hungary, Paris and the US, producing a number of important bodies of work.
She has enjoyed solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou (1982), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1990), Philadelphia Museum of Art (1997), Paul Getty Museum (2007), MAPFRE Foundation, Madrid (2009), Photography Museum Winterthur (2009), and Barbican Art Gallery (2012), between others. Iturbide is the recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Foundation Award, 1987; the Grand Prize Mois de la Photo, Paris, 1988; a Guggenheim Fellowship for the project ‘Fiesta y Muerte’, 1988; the Hugo Erfurth Award, Leverkusen, Germany, 1989; the International Grand Prize, Hokkaido, Japan, 1990; the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie Award, Arles, 1991; the Hasselblad Award, 2008; the National Prize of Sciences and Arts in Mexico City in 2008; an Honorary Degree in photography from the Columbia College Chicago in 2008; and an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2009. She continues to live and work in Mexico City.
Graciela Iturbide – Shadow lines
From January 21 to April 2, 2023
Foundation A – Brussels
More info on:
https://fondationastichting.com/
