García, Dora (ES/BE)
Carlsberg Tap E
Dora García
Born 1965 in Valladolid, Spain
Lives in Brussels
When you visit U-TURN, you may find a complete stranger coming up to you and
striking up a conversation on education, immigration or the role of art in society.
The situation may feel awkward - both because it rarely happens that strangers
approach one in that way but also because you soon realize that your conversation partner is a Downs syndrome person, and you may be unsure how to respond. The situation is a piece entitled The Innocents (2008), carefully orchestrated by Dora García in collaboration with TV Glad. TV Glad is the world's first TV station for people with learning difficulties and is an important forum for that constituency both nationally and internationally.
In García's other work at the exhibition, The Messenger, a particular person is given a phrase or a sentence in a language she neither understands nor recognizes. Once she has learnt the phrase by heart, she is sent out into Copenhagen with the task of finding someone who can decode the message. The piece acts as a mapping of the language landscape of Copenhagen, and finishes only when the problem has been solved.
We are used to an artist making a work which is subsequently displayed to viewers who will hopefully take something away from it - learning something about the artist, the world, or about their own outlook. Art has always been a means of communication that concerns itself with how we communicate.
So too with García's works. In The Innocents the viewer has the opportunity to respond to and participate in a dialogue, even if not on her own terms. Some kind of barrier has been interposed, something alien, something different, that hampers communication. In this way, Dora García's works provide a palpable experience of the encounter with the other and prejudices targeting the other. At the same time, the artist seems to imply that - in art, at any rate - there is potential to be found in the other, and in things that are initially hard tou understand: the opportunity to learn something new.
-NH
Lives in Brussels
When you visit U-TURN, you may find a complete stranger coming up to you and
striking up a conversation on education, immigration or the role of art in society.
The situation may feel awkward - both because it rarely happens that strangers
approach one in that way but also because you soon realize that your conversation partner is a Downs syndrome person, and you may be unsure how to respond. The situation is a piece entitled The Innocents (2008), carefully orchestrated by Dora García in collaboration with TV Glad. TV Glad is the world's first TV station for people with learning difficulties and is an important forum for that constituency both nationally and internationally.
In García's other work at the exhibition, The Messenger, a particular person is given a phrase or a sentence in a language she neither understands nor recognizes. Once she has learnt the phrase by heart, she is sent out into Copenhagen with the task of finding someone who can decode the message. The piece acts as a mapping of the language landscape of Copenhagen, and finishes only when the problem has been solved.
We are used to an artist making a work which is subsequently displayed to viewers who will hopefully take something away from it - learning something about the artist, the world, or about their own outlook. Art has always been a means of communication that concerns itself with how we communicate.
So too with García's works. In The Innocents the viewer has the opportunity to respond to and participate in a dialogue, even if not on her own terms. Some kind of barrier has been interposed, something alien, something different, that hampers communication. In this way, Dora García's works provide a palpable experience of the encounter with the other and prejudices targeting the other. At the same time, the artist seems to imply that - in art, at any rate - there is potential to be found in the other, and in things that are initially hard tou understand: the opportunity to learn something new.
-NH