Courtesy Murray Guy, New York

Patricia Esquivas, still from "Folklore I" (2006). Video, 14 min, 43 sec.

June 2009 Field Guide

Yinka Shonibare, MBE

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Capturing the everyday, Patricia Esquivias’s videos play like fragmented streams of consciousness. The young, New York-based Venezuelan artist jettisons video-editing tactics and instead favors long takes and what might, or might not, be improvisational acting. At the 2008 Berlin Biennial, Esquivias exhibited Folklore I (2006), a video that is obliquely about the aftermath of the Spanish civil war. The camera focuses on the artist’s hands as they leaf through snapshots, and she tells stories that string together commonplace people and objects juxtaposed against tumultuous times, blurring folklore, tabloid gossip, and textbook history.

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"Patricia Esquivias" originally appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' Summer 2009 Table of Contents.