PORTFOLIO

The work created from 1989 to 2000 was a metaphorical language of games and fairs, inspired by daily life and popular culture. In this stage a repertoire of forms and materials was developed through the compilation of images and texts from popular culture that ranged from children’s songs and games to customs and beliefs and social interactions such as fiestas in plazas.

Some of the elements incorporated into the work were:

1) Patron saints’ celebrations which are celebrated all year round in the island, 2) typical foods, 3) cock fights, 4) billiard games in bars throughout the country, 5) songs, stories and children’s games, 6) popular phrases and 7) elements from religious practices. In addition to the popular culture elements, objects from daily life were incorporated into the pieces, such as: folding tables, trays, cutting boards, among others. The geographical elements of the island and its natural resources (flora and fauna) were referenced as well; some examples of this would be: the crabs, the changos, sand and roosters, among others.  

In the process of creating the work, free association was used to establish links among the elements; these resources gave the pieces its essential character and linked them to Dadaism. The relationships that started to emerge among the elements created a disruption in the conventional narratives, establishing new open readings.  Poignancy and laughter come off these counterpoints and the unexpected encounters that are generated amongst the references.  

All the works from this period are mixed media. Diverse materials and mediums were used such as collage, photography, drawing and painting. The average formats range from 14 x 17” to 20 x 24”. Some of the pieces from this period are: Estrella, (Star), Target Shooting, Bubble Gum, What’s Your Story?, Eat, The Roosters during the Hurricane, Bullfights, Two Males do not fit into the same Cave, Castles in the Air, and A Butterfly is Flying. These pieces were in various individual and collective exhibitions in the country and internationally. They participated, among other, in the following exhibitions: IV Painting Biennial in Cuenca, Ecuador (1994); Contemporary Puerto Rican Artists, Kenkeleba Gallery, Lower East Side, New York (1996); Caribbean Art Today, Project Group, Stoffwechsel, Germany (1994); IX Iberoamerican Biennial of Art, Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City (1994).

In the year 2001 some of this pieces were recreated in video format. “Bubble Gum” and “What ’s Your Story?” are part of the Museum of Puerto Rican Art collection.

In the year 2000 the exhibition “Marked” was presented at the Museum of the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture at the Ballajá Headquarters. During this period new media was incorporated into the artistic vocabulary such as videos and installations on site and in museums.  There were other changes such as beginning to work in series, making interactive pieces and increasing the scale of the work. In addition to this, Inés started three-dimensional pieces. 

This exhibition was focused on contrasting images and texts from popular culture against elements of social institutions of power, such as:

1) Communications

2) Religious Institution – Catholic Church

3) Entertainment

4) Military Service and death rituals

5) Advertising

6) The Museum

Some of the readings that come off the dynamics of the juxtaposition of these elements are: 1) the coercitive element of the social institutions; 2) the dynamic interaction between popular culture and social institutions of power; 3) the capacity to question and transform the status quo through everyday life. 

The main pieces that referenced social institutions of power were four wooden structures. Their measures were 7’ x 4’ x 4’; people could enter and interact with/in them. These were placed against some small colored images which acted as slogans within and around the large pieces. The small pieces were stickers which measured around 9” x 12”. The contrast between the lightness of the colored images with texts, against the heaviness of the wooden pieces added to the overall meaning of the work.

The four structures were: 1) a confessional [now part of thePonce Museum of Art’s permanent collection], 2) a phone booth, 3) a ticket booth, and 4) a coffin. The colored images simulated commercial illustrations from the beginning of the 20th century but their images and texts were allusive to children’s games and songs. It could be established that the presence of these images points to a fifth institution which is advertising and finally, the fact that all this was presented within a museum points to the sixth institution: the museum as one of the institutions of the art world.

In the year 2001 a group of women artists appropriated the Museum of Doña Felisa Rincón de Gautier, which had been her residence in Old San Juan. They divided the space of the house. Ines worked with the central area of the house, the space around a three floor staircase, in which she installed hundreds of can can skirts made of tulle which floated from the main floor to the roof of the third level. This work was called the Sky is Encancaranublado, a tongue twister, signaling the political climate of the island as cloudy.

Later that year Inés participated in an on site installation at the old Ancón in Loíza. The work sought to investigate the impact that the building of a bridge that had replaced the old ancón had had on the local community. Interviews were made to “anconeros” and their families. In addition to the documentary work, a laser beam was projected crossing the Loíza River to replace or represent the rope of the old ancón. The video and an installation of drawings and animations were shown on site in addition to the laser beam.

Videos (2001 to 2010)

Most of the work that was created from the year 2001 to the year 2010 were videos. Some of these were presented with the installations: The Hare and the Turtle-Competition, In the Confessional – Refuge, What a Pain, What a Pain, What a Shame- Death were projected at the interior of the Confessional in the exhibition Marked.

Moors on the Coast and What’s Your Story? were presented at the Ancón – on site installation, in addition to the documentary based on the interviews made to the “anconeros” and their families. 

Other videos were independent pieces, recreations of previous works such as Bubble Gum and What’s Your Story.

Some of the works that were created at this time were animations made of mixed media work such as Table talk of Cats, Wolves and Mice. There were other independent pieces such as “Our Daily Bread”, “Clothing, Home, and Food”, “To See you Better”, “Without Head or Feet” and “ The Black Sheep”. 

Hands Up-Hands Down and the Red Cones were the last videos created in this period and they were presented in the installation Cut with the Same Scissors presented in 2011 at the Museum of Puerto Rican Art. These videos comprise part of the permanent collection of that Museum today. The videos were the central pieces of the exhibition. They have the audio of the “Armenian Melody” by George Gurdjieff. Two girls appear executing a series of movements which are very limited, similar to the ones pertaining to dolls. They manage a tension between the mechanical and conditioned and the desire to be freed from this condition. The girls repeat a mechanical act of raising and lowering their arms as if following an order: “hands up,” the phrase which is typically used in a holdup. At the end of the sequence, the movement is accelerated, creating the sensation of wanting or intending to flight. 

There is a group of educational videos made during the years 2001 to 2006, mainly collaborations with the University of Puerto Rico. Some of these works are: Cuba A Collection of Videos, from the Emergent as Alternative, Capetillo No. 12 and Voices with Echo and Agricultural Markets, When Giants Fall, Economic Alternatives for Cuba and Puerto Rico. 

Finally, within this section of Installations and Videos, there was the exhibition: Cut with the Same Scissors in 2011 in the Museum of Puerto Rican Art. This exhibition marks a moment of synthesis for the artist. Inés revisits her piece from 1994, Estrella (Star), a doll whose body was hollow made with paper, satin fabric and cardboard. Taking this piece as a starting point, Inés reflected on identity as language, intercalating fragments of text, compiled from various sources, into the areas that had been cut off from the body of the doll. In the development of the work, Estrella and the texts exploded into numerous versions; they were recreated in collage, photography, drawing and videos. All the elements sought to distill or reduce the world of representation to basic or primary languages. Dolls are schemes of female figurative representations. The dolls allude to childhood as the primary human experience, which precedes language. The text was the second formal component of the sample. The gallery was filled with texts taken from numerous sources such as Dadaist and constructivist art works from the beginning of the 20th century, to the texts of Hakuin Ekaku from Zen Buddhism, to phrases allusive to games and popular expressions, among others. Both the initial selections of the texts and their placement within the pieces were chosen rather randomly.   

The methodology of the work was structured as a sequence of the following actions: photograph, cut, transfer and refill with texts. Cutting was the main element of the work. It is the operational violence involved in the act of creating the pieces. In addition to this, “Cut with the same Scissors” alludes to a popular expression which implies that we are all socialized or conditioned in the same way, by the same system of cognition or language. There is a third metaphorical connotation, which refers to language as a scissor because it cuts and fragments experience. The act of cutting repeatedly suggests an emptying or draining a doll suffocated by language with the intention of rescuing its innocence. It is a trajectory from silence to the word, a deconstruction similar to the one performed in the inquiry of Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta. In this process we seek for an identity and find nothing, no subject, just thoughts and language codified into social processes. This inquiry can be very rigorous, even violent, but it is freeing, posing the possibility of consciousness as the ground of all phenomena, previous to language, our own true nature.

These drawings are a series of illustrations based on some of the exercises included in the second part of the book by Greg Goode: The Direct Path. This second part of the book focuses on experiencing the Body.  The intention of the ink drawings has been to extrapolate some of the examples and reflections of the book into drawings. The first series was titled: Body Positions and the second series – Sensations and Perception. The first series approaches the body in its three main positions: sitting, standing or lying down in repose or movement. The Second Series investigates experiences such as itches, burning sensations, pain, noise, savouring, amongst others.   

Eventually, these figurative drawings evolved into the drawings of direct experience presented in the project Corporal Traces. At that stage there was no more representation of the figure but a direct marking of inked body parts, specifically bones and joints unto paper. Today we can observe the dialogue established between all these series of drawings and their foundation on the inquiry of perception.

(refer to the works on the home page)