THE RAGE OF DEVOTION
Some time ago I decided to change my life in the most extraordinary way possible. I looked in and without intending it I remembered the phrase with which my mother said goodbye the last time I saw her at sixteen years old – “I wish you well, and believe me I hope you´ll become strong and brave, so you can be merciless when the time comes to destroy your body and crush your soul the next time we see each other”- After an overwhelming emotional breakdown, I started this series of images intermingling with pictorial canvases and photographs of my family archive to impel the observer to immerse themselves in my psychology.
I stumble, but in the same way freeing myself, finding their lascivious looks, my fear of touch and the instinctive repulsion that represents for me the concept of “family”. In “The rage of devotion” I discover that although I look, I don´t want to see, because what lives inside me, looks and it is completely monstrous.
Liza Ambrossio
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Liza Ambrossio is an young Mexican artist based in Madrid, Spain. Her body of work combines photographs of macabre archive with cryptic paintings, performance, intervention, installations, videos, psychology, lucid nightmares, science fiction, ero-guro and witchcraft that come together in free association.
Wen she was sixteen years old she asked for one of the house keepers of her mother's house to steal photographs of the family albums while Liza self-portraying herself looking for ways to survive away from her family's own decision, while compiling chilling early-morning scenes in Mexico City, her mental and real travels from her adolescence to her adulthood. In her project The rage of devotion-La ira de la devoción, the feminine is threatening because it seduces and in the poetics of its seduction devours. Project awarded with the Discoveries scholarship of Photo España-La Fabrica, the scholarship portfolio review for FotoFest 2018 in Houston, she was selected to participate for New Visions 2018 in the Cortona On the Move Festival, Italy, she received the first honorific mention for the Emerging Prize within the Encontros Da Imagens festival-2018, Portugal and the first prize in the Voies Off Award 2018 in Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France. Resulting in a photo book co-edited by Desiertas Ediciones and La Fabrica.
For her latest project Blood Orange-Naranja de Sangre, Liza paints with three colors: orange, red and yellow the psychology of uprooting, madness, love and loneliness as an affront to terror and dehumanization because she believes that human passion is in itself a act of challenge. Series awarded with the FNAC New Talent Award, 2018, the 6th. Edition of the (TAI) Photography Talent Grant, Liza is currently selected for the contest Full Contact in Tarragona, Spain and she was winner of the Babel Gallery Award (Brazil) in the first Contest of Contemporary Photography of Latin America in Monterrey, Mexico and the DOCfield Dummy Award Fundación Banc Sabadell 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. She has recently been nominated for the Plat(t)form prize of Winterthur Fotomuseum in Switzerland 2019 and she has been invited to exhibit at the FORMAT19 festival in the UK; Liza has been granted with scholarships for production residencies in Iceland, the United States and Luxembourg 2017-2018.
Links
www.lizaambrossio.com
https://vimeo.com/276196677
https://vimeo.com/user66654129
https://elpais.com/cultura/2018/10/04/babelia/1538649113_222111.html
https://www.lofficielmexico.com/arte-y-cultura/entrevista-liza-ambrossio
http://www.camaraoscura.net/liza-ambrossio-la-ira-de-la-devocion-apertura-13-septiembre-17-noviembre-2018/?lang=en