Influenced by themes of origin, nature, and femininity, her work also deals with such issues as identity, migration and cultural displacement, informed by her complex biography as a Peruvian artist living in Philadelphia, Costa Rica, and working internationally.
Paredes grew up in Peru, studied art in Lima and then at Cambridge School of Arts and Crafts in the United Kingdom and completed further studies in Rome. She has traveled extensively, gaining international recognition while establishing her professional career as an artist. Paredes currently divides her time between Philadelphia and San José, Costa Rica, researching and producing work in both cities.
Paredes’ photo work consists of self-portraits, which she calls photo-performances—they are photographic records of intricately staged events. By using her body as the “blank canvas,” which has been painted, posed and costumed, she often performs as an animal-like creature, a mythical being formed at the crossroads of human imagination and nature.
Her images frequently interpret herself as coming to a middle ground with nature where she morphs into an entity that is not completely human or completely animal, but something new, as in Birdman Contemplating, 2008, in which she presents herself as a human-bird hybrid. Likewise, her sculpture depicts her body merging with flora, shells and bones of other species.
The exhibition also explores a new direction in her self-portraiture. Paredes has begun to address the pressure on her identity while living as a South American in Pennsylvania. She mordantly presents herself as a migrant whose identity is reified through prejudiced notions about her Latin American origins. In the photograph, Blue Landscape, 2008, Paredes stares forward as she stands in front of a wall, riotously decorated with tropical floral designs. Her skin is carefully painted to match and merge into the wall’s patterns. By blending into a patently artificial environment that incorporates mawkish renderings of tropical themes that allude to stereotypical ideas associated with Latin American visual aesthetics, she truly represents a disenfranchised migrant, absorbed into El Norte’s misbegotten idea of her cultural origins.
Cecilia Paredes will give a public lecture about her work on Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. in Room 102, the Art Building, Humboldt State University. The public is invited; admission is free.
An opening reception for the artist will be held at HSU First Street Gallery on Saturday, Feb. 7, from 6 to 9 p.m. The exhibition will run from Feb. 7 – March 9.
The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., and is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California. Admission is free and those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead at (707) 443-6363. To learn more, visit www.humboldt.edu/~first