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Paraiso Tropical


Performance installation with video mapping, sound and 4x2mt water pool reflection surface.

Concept
elena victoria pastor

Video Mapping
Tomás Santana

Interviews
Luis Guillermo Franquiz, Mónica Henriquez, Tatiana Serrano, Pedro Suárez, Francia Elena Suárez (her mother) and NGO Hearts on Venezuela.

Hamburg, 2020

elena victoria puts photography, video, performance and installations into dialogue to show her interest in current affairs. Influenced by her career in journalism, she creates ways to express emotions by setting analogies with elements of nature, to reflect on issues such as migration and feminism. In her latest works the presence of nature became yet more intensive by placing it as a key frame.

A video mapping of leaves, which resemble the tropical rainforest, creates a visual contrast between sober realities and a romanticized idea of paradisiacal nature. Projected on a layer of rudimentary plastic foil, it is reminding of simple constructions found on places of conflict like borders with massive traffic of illegal walkers. The history of migration is cruel, even in the present. We listen to a series of interviews with witnesses of the Simon Bolivar's Bridge, the most transited border point between Venezuela and Colombia. Voices speak to us, telling stories about the immeasurable political and social collapse of Venezuela. Paraiso Tropical is a comment on her home country’s geopolitical agenda. With a visceral and intimate imprint, which is often to be found in her artwork, Elena Pastor brings some of her personal path on the topic, which finally addresses it to everyday life, familiarity and how usual the act of migration is.

images: Pedro Torres & courtesy of the artist