Working in different media like sculpture, video, painting and performance my work deals with processes as translation, assimilation and appropriation. I think very often of my praxis as going behind the traces of an object's genealogical tree. What are its possible ancestors, influences or new contexts in which it might reappear? Sometimes this approach can be real, historical, and other times, those connections are rather fictional ones.
During my work process, the metaphor of a non-stop domino effect, where things and contents are constantly moving each other, is recurrent. I try to stay far away of the idea of a zero point of creation, thus I question terms strong related to art making as revolution, creativity or authorship. For me, art is a dialogue with strangers, but this dialogue does not only resonate to the direct participants of the artistic experience, but creates also a wider echo. One of the main questions in my work is how art is perceived and transformed outside the art context and what are the meeting points between different disciplines as ethnology / art / design / decoration and the relation between high and popular culture.
The theme of blindness has been a central motif of my artistic practice, as well as a commitment for years. This interest is not only related to the impossibility of seeing in the sense of a physical disability. The cognitive level (seeing but not understanding or not wanting to understand), the historical representation, as well as the emotional and political dimension of this phenomenon, have been aspects that I have explored from the materiality of my work. Throughout the years I have analysed this subject through different perspectives, methods and techniques: painting, engraving, carving and some objects with tactile qualities. Also through the text in a publication (Andere Koordinaten / other coordinates) in which I interviewed people with visual disabilities.
The way a blind person approaches the world directly questions my point of view (eminently retinal) and broadens the limits of my perception and my consciousness. What happens when the core of an image is created thinking of a pair of eyes that do not come? Is the image perceived differently? What is it that my eyes cannot see? What is it that I prefer not to see?
The main axis of her work is to make a permanent assessment of the physical and symbolic status of things. Using objects that are installed in everyday life and strips them from its formal or linguistic function to provide them with their own language. This generates a particular transgression of reality, where mimesis allows us to experience new experiences and situations in which the sensatory relationship is altered to offer a new perspective on the distinction between true or false. Her work fosters a semantic game between objects, actions, and perceptions; emphasising materiality: This is her pillar of work. To do so, Yepez examines the anthropological aspects around objects and proposes a visual poetry that reminds us that existence of things is only relevant when we observe them.
In my work I use textiles and drawing. To do this, I collect images, use fabrics for printing, dyeing, sewing, and creating installations. These materials describe situations, bodies and objects that surround my experience of time and space. I seek to reflect with humour about mourning, death and everyday life: the objects that are used daily, the simplicities, the smells, the silhouettes, and the invented names help me to find the meaning of loss.
The creation of images and the sculptural processes in the workshop allow me to meditate and transform the nature of the obvious, of the things that give pleasure, and of memories through the reappropriation of everyday objects. Everything that seems insignificant becomes the best resource for memory.
My intention is to inhabit and dialogue with space. In the search to cling to memory and in fear of forgetting, my work is nothing more than a set of fleeting and transitory fragments. As they transform and transform me, the material and the space that contains them changes.
Press release courtesy FORO.SPACE.
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