Dolores Esteve
Biography
I’m Dolores, I was born in Cordoba in 1978 where I still live and work. Many times I have tried to escape from this place but I always end up coming back. I like being able to see the mountains from my terrace. In Buenos Aires, I wanted to die.
It has been a couple of year since I work with photography, my life is divided in between what I do to earn money (fashion and publicity) and my personal work, which usually tends to reformulate those tricky and successy messages. A sort of “answer”, in the best of cases. Anyways, I’m tired of being divided and I’m focusing on being myself.
Vision of art
1. Choose a work that represents you, describe it in relation to its format and materiality, its relation with time and space, its style and theme; detail its production process.
I loved doing the pictures of the empty boxes of alfajores (typical sweets from this region) that were going to represent Cordoba. It was extremely amusing to investigate the local sweets, to choose the cheapest boxes as models to build my own, pixel pictures of fat women bathing at the Fantasio …at the end of the process I did a good take of the product and had it copied at a considerable size, (as it should be) ...boring.
I remember I hated (and still do) the marketing speeches that abound all over in all kinds of circuits and environments and specially those held by the politicians on the turn. That was the main starting point of the work. The funny thing is that I actually lend the work for the opening of the Caraffa Museum (an improvised and shameless propaganda act). The authorities asked me to donate it to the collection. I think they didn’t even look at it properly.
I obviously said yes.
I love thinking of my alfajores box at the basement of the Fereyra Palace as a sort of silent terrorists.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
No suggestions
3. In reference to your work and your position in the national and international art fields, what tradition do you recognize yourself in? Who are your contemporary referents? What artists of previous generations are of interest to you?
This is a hard one. I love the conceptual art of the 70’s, radical and divested. The performance art (in their good examples) can be of such depth and boldness. In that sense Joseph Beuys is to me the most precious example of a true artist, intelligent overall. Despite, my work is absolutely aesthetic and object like, I think I’m not as brave as to do real art.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
I don’t usually frequent exhibitions, I get bored. I think the most coherent I’ve lately seen is the Sole Sanchez performance at the CCEC in the context of a local feria of design. I guess she had been invited because of her project (Livais) played with fashion language. The action took place in between a fashion show – catwalks, coat stands with trendy clothing- and was almost unperceived. She took the opportunity to create an overwhelming contrasts between what was happening in the rest of the space and the small room where she projected a denunciation video on the Guantanamo tortures while on the floor she reproduced herself the postures that the prisoners were forced to have day and night. Once out, I saw the people drinking Camparis and taking pictures. I thought we really needed more art to wake us up and less pseudo aesthetic-intellectual speculations. That bores. Nowadays art really has got to be forceful. How many of us can really do it?