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Sovereign of the Seas, 2022. Video installation. Arts & Humanities 2022 Graduate Exhibition (group show), Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA, USA
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“Each work is based on the archival reconstruction of a woman's life through a combination of historical investigations and fictional narratives. Despite their focus on a single woman, none of these works is a biography: the documents are edited and assembled in order to shape a series of possible narratives, and the archival fragments emerge as traces of forgotten stories.” (Giovanna Zapperi, 2013. No 105 Feminist review, p.23)
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Started in 2021, Sovereign of the Seas is an open-ended, multidisciplinary project rooted in archival exploration and personal narratives across landscapes and timelines. It began with a series of postcards I found in Buenos Aires, sent by María Inés Barletti, an Argentinian cruise ship waitress, in 1993. These postcards, mailed to her lover in Argentina, share her excitement, loneliness, and fatigue as she navigated life on a Caribbean cruise ship named Sovereign of the Seas. Since then, the project has evolved through exhibitions and new artifacts discovered along my travels, incorporating video installation, artist books, photography, painting, and poetry. Each found object—postcards, cruise ship greeting cards, or historical content notebooks—creates an interconnected web of stories that brings overlooked women’s narratives into focus, reactivating them in new, poetic ways. In this project, I use these found narratives as a structure for my own re-telling and fictional expansion of the correspondence. Working in collaboration with the American poet, Catherine Niu, I am expanding the postcard narrative into a story as true as imagined that takes form in a large-scale installation including photography, text, video, found objects, artist books, and, drawing. Sovereign of the Seas became a frame to connect ideas and generate a multiformat visual and textual fiction around these postcards. The stamps on the postcards carry the design of the 1961 Antarctic Treaty of 1961 which links the glacier drawings that I was doing before running into the postcards. I aim to generate a dialogue between fragments of the Antarctic Treaty of 1961 text, the found postcards, poetic reinterpretations, and pictures that my father, Jorge del Pedregal, took when he went to Antarctica in 2015. These works offer a place to engage, through a poetic language, with scattered ideas put together which reflect on women´s archives, contemporary Antarctica, territory and sovereignty, and the intimate experience of loneliness in a vast landscape like the sea.
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Iniciado en 2021, Sovereign of the Seas es un proyecto multidisciplinario y expansivo, basado en la exploración de archivos y narrativas personales a través de paisajes y líneas de tiempo. Comenzó con una serie de postales que encontré en Buenos Aires, enviadas por María Inés Barletti, una camarera argentina de un barco de crucero, en 1993. Estas postales, enviadas a su amante en Argentina, comparten su emoción, soledad y fatiga mientras navegaba la vida en un barco de crucero caribeño llamado Sovereign of the Seas. Desde entonces, el proyecto ha evolucionado a través de exposiciones y nuevos artefactos descubiertos a lo largo de mis viajes, incorporando instalaciones de video, libros de artista, fotografía, pintura y poesía. Cada objeto encontrado—postales, tarjetas de saludo de barcos de crucero o cuadernos históricos de contenido—crea una red interconectada de historias que pone en foco las narrativas olvidadas de las mujeres, reactivándolas de maneras poéticas y nuevas. En este proyecto, utilizo estas narrativas encontradas como estructura para mi propia narración y expansión ficticia de la correspondencia. Trabajando en colaboración con una poeta estadounidense, Catherine Niu, la narrativa de la postal se vuelve una historia tan real como imaginada que toma forma en una instalación a gran escala que incluye fotografía, texto, video, libros de artista, objetos encontrados y dibujo. Sovereign of the Seas se convirtió en el marco para conectar ideas y generar una ficción visual y textual multiformato en torno a estas postales. Las estampillas de las postales llevan el diseño del Tratado antártico de 1961, que vincula dibujos de glaciares que estaba haciendo antes de encontrar las postales. En este proyecto busco generar un diálogo entre fragmentos del texto del Tratado Antártico de 1961, postales, reinterpretaciones poéticas y fotografías que tomó mi padre, Jorge del Pedregal, cuando fue a la Antártica en 2015. Estas obras ofrecen un lugar para involucrarse, a través de un lenguaje poético, con ideas dispersas reunidas que reflexionan sobre archivos de mujeres, La Antártica contemporánea, la soberanía y el territorial y la experiencia íntima de soledad en paisajes vastos como el mar.projection 1: A María Inés, 2022 digital video, 7’40’’ Collaboration with María Sander and Catherine Niu.
projection 2: Sea, sound,song, 2022 digital video 6’50’’ Collaboration with Sam Rathbun, Annabeth Rosen, Graham Mcdougal, Ann Hamilton, Phillipp Byrne, Young Suh, and Katie Peterson.
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The Antarctic Treaty, 2022. Installation: paintings, poems, found objects and artist's books by Sofía del Pedregal (Bulletin 67, Postcards and glaciers), other books: sonnet(s) by Ulises Carrión and A voyage on the North Sea by Marcel Broodthaers.
Postcard 41, 2022 Poem by Catherine Niu / digital print 12 x 18 inch
Antarctic Treaty of 1961, signed December 1, 1959, 2022 Poem by Catherine Niu / 2 digital prints 12 x 18 inch (each)
From the cabin, 2015 Photograph series by Jorge del Pedregal / digital print 12 x 18 inch (each)
Cruise ship (1993), 2022 / Watercolor on paper 11 x 15 inch
Postcards on shelves, 2022 / 2 wood shelves variable dimensions
Glacier 1, 2022 / Drawing on paper on the wall 20x25 inch
Here vanishes there (or seven stones) poem by Sofía del Pedregal
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