- Artist:
- Diana Coca
- Date:
- 2008
- Technique:
- Silver salt photograph on barite paper. Vintage copy
- Dimensions:
- 11 x 11 cm each. Set of 14 photographs
- Origin:
- Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma
- Registration number:
- 698
- Edition:
- 1/5
Diana Coca created the ”Arlés Bruto” series in 2007, comprised of fourteen black-and-white photographs. The artist represents herself in each of these smallformat shots, the result of an action to reveal female stereotypes.
Her body in movement in a natural setting, a composition she uses in other photographic projects, enables her to create a kind of uneasiness before the image. Simulation and anatomy, referring to certain surrealist roots in the style of Hans Bellmer. Using this narrative sequence, she works on her fragmented body as the object and subject of her reflections on how the attributes that artificially characterise the female body, such as make-up, tights or high-heeled shoes, become mechanisms to control women.
E.B.
Lives and works between Madrid and Beijing. Diana Coca graduated in Fine Arts, with the speciality of Photography, from the University of Brighton (2003) and in Philosophy from the Universitat de les Illes Balears (2009). In 2004 she won the photography scholarship of the MAE, Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for her artistic production in the Real Academia de España en Roma. She completed her training by participating in the following residency programmes: Aula de Danza Estrella Casero run by the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares and La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2007), International Center of Photography of New York, Matadero scholarship Madrid (2008), Programa de Residencias Artísticas para Creadores Iberoamericanos en Oaxaca (Artist Residency Programme for Ibero American Creators in Oaxaca), Mexico, by AECID, FONCA and CONCULTA (2009), and Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing (2010).
The destruction and construction of reality or the control exercised by all the attributes that contribute to characterising the female body (make-up, high heels…) are recurrent themes in her work, dealt with from the symbiosis between the performance, video and photography. Through narrative sequences we find her semi-nude, fragmented body conceived as object and subject at the same time, as she uses herself as the territory for experimentation and subversion, with the desire of transforming the tension of what is concealed and placing emphasis on the slavery of human beings arising from the technological dependence of present-day society.
A runner-up in the Art Jove competitions in 2005 and 2004, organised by the Govern de les Illes Balears and in PhotoEspaña 2004, she has been distinguished with the Premio de la Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca (2009). She has exhibited in the Centre de Cultura “Sa Nostra” (Palma de Mallorca, 2005), Museu d’Art Contemporani d’Eivissa (2006), Canal Isabel II exhibition hall (Madrid, 2007), Deichtorcenter (Triennial of Photography of Hamburg, 2008), Galeria SKL (Palma de Mallorca, 2009), Sunshine International Art Museum in Beijing (2010) and the Centro Cultural Correios Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil and Instituto Cultural Mejicano in El Salvador (all in 2011), among others.
Her works are present in the collections of museums and institutions such as the Real Academia de España en Roma, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca, the Consell de Mallorca and the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing, among others.
E.B.
