ITURBIDE - Mexican Art Through a German Telescope
Impressions of an artist

by Simone Kussatz, Special Guest Writer

Some people find pleasure looking at the world through the eyes of others. Some do not. Some artists feel opposed to free interpretations of their work, some encourage them, some do not. We know that the way we perceive the world is based on our cultural background and personal experiences, may this be transferable to the arts.

After returning from Rose Gallery in the Bergamot Station Arts Center in Santa Monica, currently presenting fourteen images by Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, I felt as if I'd returned from a journey through Mexico and American history with a visit in Alan Cohen's, Frida Kahlo's and Georgia O'Keeffe's house.

Iturbide, a photographer, who is primarily known for presenting Mexican culture, its traditions and people as in "Nuestra Senora de las Iguanas" ("Our Lady of the Iguanas"), 1979, impresses us once more with her new exhibit, featuring works shot along the Texas-Mexican border in the Botanical Gardens of Oaxaca and at Santa Gertrudies, South Texas.

Walking through Iturbide's exhibit one can see, among others the following photographs: A prickly cactus shot from close up, a cactus with numbers, three trees in a row, a fine-meshed net shot from an angle looking up to the sky, and an image of a wooden triangle next to a dove in a blur.

Iturbide's images stir emotions such as feeling endangered, threatened, or captured, or make one realize about their relationship to nature. Since Iturbide's photographs were taken on the American-Mexian border, they provoked my thoughts about the meanings of borders.
What are borders? Borders are separation lines, being able to contrast one country, or one political system from another. They can establish a view from within and without. They can also protect the identity of a country or person.

In that sense I came to understand Iturbide's work as an artist's dialogue with America, its history and current politics, and her questioning about immersing herself, as a Mexican, into American culture. The stress of her photographs taken along the American-Mexican border, made me think about the battlefields of the Mexican American War between 1846-1848 with the annexation of Texas.
It also made me think about all the Mexicans who were trying to come across the American border and who have lost their lives on their way. In some of Iturbide's photographs I found the same aesthetics and sensibility as in Alan Cohen's work, presented in the book "On European Ground" with essays by Sander L. Gilman.
This is most evident in Iturbide's image showing a barbed wire fence covered by sand, which looks from a distance as photographs taken by Cohen, presenting the sights of Auschwitz, which are covered by grass today.

If we decide to interpret Iturbide's images the same as Cohen's, as presentations of historical sights today with their haunting memory, they can also create the same tension: between the violence of the past and the inscrutability of its remnants.

Although, Ms. Iturbide was influenced by photographers Tina Modetti and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as her teacher Manuel Alvarez Bravo, I could also see that she was influenced by Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe. This, however, more spiritually than artistically.
There are common aspects between two strong and independent artists from Mexico, Iturbide and Kahlo, both lived in modern New York, both tried to break away from tradition, just as there is the common experience between two female artists, Iturbide and O'Keeffe escaping to the American desert to work in solitude.
The show, which is on view through June 18, 2005 is accompanied by four Iturbide books, including "Images of the Spirit" published by Aperture 1996, "La Forma Y La Memoria" published by Phaidon Books 2001, "Monograph" published by Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey 1996, and "Pajaros" published by Twin Palms, 2002.

I do hope that my viewpoint does not scare, but attracts and creates more views through cultural telescopes in the future.