Exhibition dates: 17th August – 15th September 2013
Installation video of Erika Diettes Sudarios (Shrouds) at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2013
© Dr Marcus Bunyan
“Erika Diettes travelled to different cities in the department of Antioquia (Colombia) to interview women who had been present at the torture and murder of their loved ones. Diettes photographed the women, closely cropped in black and white, at a moment of great vulnerability – all but one with their eyes closed. The resultant twenty photographs were printed on seven feet tall silk panels and form the work Sudarios (shrouds are a burial cloak, a cloth that shrouds the body of the deceased). The artist always intended for these images to be printed on silk and had the installation in mind before she took the photographs: in other words previsualisation was strong. The work is usually displayed in sacred spaces such as churches and convents with a sound track of a barely audible, sighing female voice; here in Ballarat the work is hung in the former Mining Exchange building, a seat of colonial power and wealth which can be read as appropriate for the presentation of this work, for torture is always about the power of one person over another.”
From the catalogue essay Intimations of Mor(t)ality: Sudarios (Shrouds) by Erika Diettes by Dr Marcus Bunyan.
Ballarat International Foto Biennale
12 Lydiard St North, Ballarat 3350
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