RENACIMIENTO

 

 

Irina Jibert (Paris, 1989) graduated in Law and Politics Sciences by 2011, started to get in contact with Arts three years later to the point of making the decision of leaving her former activity as to explore her own creativity.

 

Renacimiento, Irina’s project generated along her residency at R.A.R.O Madrid, is based on Carl Jung’s psychological theories about individuation, understood as the process of the individual to be born again, to discover and to get the singularity that boosts him/her as to look for fullness. By this, the artist wants to show the need for a return to our own essence, our basis, getting rid of our ego to start from scratch as to become better individuals.

 

To do it so, this multimedia work takes as the starting point the Antelope Canyon, Arizona (USA). It is one of the most special places for the artist, very much haunted by its colors, textures, and shapes. Visiting that place meant a fresh air breath for her, as to start thinking about her own need for rebirth. To perform this project, working at the R.A.R.O’s studios chosen by Irina(*), she decided to project her own photographs from that landscape on the naked, painted-in-white, skins of several models.

 

As an orchestra conductor, Irina provided clear guidelines to the models to generate the postures to reach during the photo session. In that way, models’ bodies were adapted and integrated into that specific space and surrounding. After one minute, the models changed to a different position to let them explore their own expression related to the rebirth concept. Bodies searched their places, testing limits and barriers and being conscious of the environment around them.

 

Irina’s need to relate these photographs and videos with rebirth makes the artist split the project into several steps. Colour and shapes generated by the canyon landscape and the postures of the models invite us to recall the uterus and the development of a baby in his/her mother’s belly. This is the reason why the first phase of the work is closure. Fetal positions evolve towards more open postures, from discomfort to comfort, from tension to liberation, expressing anxiety as a result of fear to the unknown. Within the next phases, the bodies will adapt themselves to more open postures being already prepared to rebirth and to accept themselves as they really are.

 

In Irina’s words, “we don’t see the images overtly because they talk about a hidden truth, but also —and very importantly— as an answer to the pornography of today’s images, that participates into killing our intimacy. Here the images are available only to the ones that are willing to look at them, therefore creating an intimate relationship between the subject of the image and the viewer”.

 

It is worthy of mention that the project has been modified along the stage from a very personal idea to a much more open and collaborative one. The models took a very active role, helping to the artist’s creative rebirth by feeding it with their own experiences and understanding about the immaterial revival.

 

During her residency, Irina met Natalia Muñoz Izarra and her project about photographing the environment from a van (The Camera Van Project), which means that the inner part of the vehicle becomes into a dark camera, projecting the outside landscape inside the van. Cooperation between both artists provided a different view to Irina’s project and, as a consequence, it gave new possibilities to the Renacimiento project.

 

Irina is willing to go along with this project in the near future by continue working on it in different cities, in different contexts and exploring new phases still missing as to reach a complete rebirth.

 

(*) Irina Jibert has worked at Black Balance Club and at Daniel Vega’s studio. Acknowledgments to Estelle López, Raúl Delbado, Inés Clara Sánchez, Miguel Ballarin, Lia Mun, Natalia Muñoz Izarra and Israel Guerrero Vázquez for their participation in the project and to Nigredo Espacio for sharing the place to show it to the public.