With a widely acclaimed artistic practice in the field of photography, above all based on self-representational images, Júlia Ventura has appropriated the canons of classical modernity in order to subvert them. In her oeuvre, the figure of the woman-model slides critically towards powerful affirmation of the woman-artist, in a journey of empowerment based on personal identity that already began in the 1970s, in a career spanning Portugal and the Netherlands.
She has also maintained regular exploration of different formats, including video, performance, installation and painting.
Alongside Helena Almeida, she has achieved a unique status in Portuguese contemporary art: when Júlia Ventura presented the exhibition, Themes of Observation and Enchantment at the Galeria Pedro Oliveira in 1991, it was the boldest example until that moment in time of an artist's deconstruction of a self-representational photographic image. The way that the printed image inhabited the space and became both the content and container represented...a remarkable paradigm shift.
The artist exhibited her works at the Gallery on two other occasions (1995 and 1999), affirming the recognition of a pictorial work in which issues of identity and the body offer a critique of the status of the image of classical modernity, in particular its dimension of transcendental abstraction, while also underlining a political aspect (related to gender).
This exhibition is entitled Looking Closely, Point of Indecision. It will show works made from the 1970s to the present day, most of which have never previously been exhibited in Portugal.
Light and its importance in the construction of the photographic image.
The representation of nature and its technical reproducibility.
(Self) representation as a hermeneutic impossibility.
The exposition of an “I” that is neither the artist nor her persona.
Classic themes, unwanted resolutions. The work: an entity.
An in-between.
Miguel von Hafe Pérez
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Júlia Ventura was born in 1952, in Lisbon. She lives in Lisbon and Amsterdam. She exhibited her work for the first time in 1977, at the National Society of Fine Arts (Lisbon), and since then has exhibited in several Portuguese and foreign museums, such as: Villa Arson (Nice, 1989), Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon, 1997), Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, (Genève, 2002), Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (Porto, 2004), Kroller-Muller Museum, (Otterlo, 2005), Chiado Museum (Lisbon, 2007).
Her works are represented in several private and institutional collections in Portugal and abroad, in particular the Netherlands Media Art Institute (Holland), Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (Switzerland), Serralves Foundation (Porto), Chiado Museum (Lisbon) and Culturgest (Lisbon).
Entrada actualizada el el 28 mar de 2023
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