Ana Gallardo – “Pencas”

31.05 – 01.07 / 2014
Galería Oliva Arauna, Madrid

“Pencas” is made up of a series of pieces born from a personal experience that the artist underwent in Mexico during the year 2011.

Having been awarded a grant to carry out an art project, Ana Gallardo settled in Mexico City, and for three months worked in Xochiquetzal, an old people’s home for women who had previously been street prostitutes. She had a very specific and approved proposal that, when starting work, was amended by the authorities of the home, making evident the difficult human situations.

The pieces from Ana Gallardo’s show combine in a certain way to create a collective of extreme works. Urgent and unyielding, they oscillate between invisibility and a psychological profundity; desperate words and impotency; quiet discretion and outing the taboo; impetus and resignation; a minimal outward appearance and extreme human conditions. Continuing with her reflections based around insecurity –as a situation imposed on the marginal, on the old, the sick, the helpless, the abandoned or the abused–, on this occasion it manifests itself as the subject and method, managing to communicate through the simple line, the vigour of the charcoal and a text poured out across the wall, a violence that –although seeping out from the dark side of daily life– finds us defenceless.