PERSONAL TERRITORIES
For this exhibition, I draw inspiration from Andy Warhol’s Pop Art, using popular and familiar images that have been repeated throughout history and that in some way symbolize each of the cities in which I have lived. Each piece features highly contrasting colors, and the continuous use of Indigenous clothing as color and texture is what connects me to my country of origin. This expression has evolved into maps/personal territories that narrate my formation as a woman, as an artist, as a mother, and as a voice shaped through the experiences I have gathered in the different countries where I have lived.
I recount my personal journey from my birthplace to the present I am forging. I trace the path of the places where I have lived, beginning with Guatemala, my homeland. I represent it with maps of the country—one including the territory of Belize (before) and one without Belize (after)—images widely used in advertising and media. It is a map that immediately evokes contemporary Guatemala.
I then travel to Switzerland, where I studied for a short time. I remember this place from my adolescence, where chocolate was what I loved most—and something we often associate with Switzerland, along with banking.
I move on to Miami Beach to complete my studies, a city that has always been closely connected to my life. I portray it with humor and movement. I draw on what, in the 1950s, came to represent Miami: flamingos, placing them before the city’s skyline.
I then move to New York City, where I begin my career in the arts and design. Here, in Manhattan and its many neighborhoods, I have walked and walked its streets, and I represent the city in the only way we all recognize it: The Big Apple. With a sense of humor, I imitate the most iconic aspect of the apple and literally turn it into a micro-map of all the neighborhoods.
I complete the circle by returning to Guatemala. After living in cosmopolitan cities, the banana becomes a symbol that connects me closely with my country. The background of these pieces includes banana leaves combined with scraps of güipil fabric, bringing together our differences and similarities. It is a patchwork of our culture and society.
The final work is a skyline of London, a piece still in progress and unfinished. It is a city that attracts me deeply and has been connected to my life in various ways, making it part of my personal territories. It represents the present I am creating and inhabiting.
The interpretation each viewer may have of these cities is shaped by the feelings and memories they evoke when standing before them. Within my personal territories, these cities are places that have left traces on me, that have shaped who I am, and that are added to the person who now creates them.
The intervention in the Project Room is a study based on Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color, where we can observe an exploration of the colors repeatedly found in Indigenous clothing and naturally integrated into our culture. There is also a reading of the stripes that are repeatedly used in traditional cortes. This piece allows visitors to enter the room and immerse themselves in color, experiencing up close the tones and the sensations they evoke in each individual.
Sylvia Denburg