Don’t Stare at the Sun

Works from the Daros Latinamerica Collection

CoCA - Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, Torun, Poland

26.06.2009 - 13.09.2009

Curated by Agnieszka Pindera and Joanna Zielińska

Text taken from the CoCA website:

Our bodies have a remarkable ability to immortalize transitory places and objects in the form of images. Hans Belting says that the collective cultural memory that provides us with images is also retained in the institutional memory of archives. An art collection is one such archive - "a place outside of time". The exhibition Don't Stare at the Sun. Works from the Daros Latinamerica Collection comprises video works, objects and installations by Latin American artists.

Key ideas for an understanding of the exhibition are oblivion (repressed experience) and memory, on which the artists draw in their tales of desire, of sensual perception of the world, of a "longing body", experiences frequently too difficult to be expressed - hidden in simple instincts, traditions and pre-Columbian rites, and also of events in the social and political histories of the places they come from. Another departure point is the body defined as the place where memory dwells. Jacques Lacan writes: (...) I speak through my body without realizing this. I always say more than I think I do.

People turn their eyes away from the sun, and Georges Bataille writes: the erection and the sun scandalize, in the same way as the cadaver and the darkness of cellars. Human eyes tolerate neither sun, coitus, cadavers, nor obscurity, but with different reactions. The phrase "don't stare at the sun" in the title of the exhibition refers directly to sensual cognition, traumatic at times, a dangerous flouting of taboos, touching upon painful areas.  

Artists from our collection in the exhibition: 

Mauricio Alejo, Juan Carlos Alom, María Fernanda Cardoso, Clemencia Echeverri, Regina José Galindo, Teresa Margolles, Ana Mendieta, Ernesto Neto, Javier Téllez 

Works in the exhibition