Alessandra Sanguinetti
The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams
Natascha Mehlhop Gallery is pleased to announce “The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams”, the first solo exhibition of color photographs by the award winning US artist Alessandra Sanguinetti in Europe.
This ongoing series of photographs follows the lives of the cousins Guillermina and Belinda as they grow up on their family’s farm outside Buenos Aires. Ms. Sanguinetti has collaborated with the girls since 1998, cultivating an intimate relationship with the pair and-, capturing images inspired by the expectations, fantasies, and fears that accompany the psychological and physical transition from childhood to adulthood. The mismatched girls, corpulent Guille and almost androgynous Belinda enact images that seem inspired by Victorian women pioneer photographers such as Julia Margret Cameron, who often used domestic settings to portray figures from poetry or painting. In Ophelias from 2002 we come across Sanguinetti’s great talent to achieve a rich spontaneity by simply using the available surroundings. Both girls, floating in the water and mirroring the others’ pose, become dual Ophelias, Guille ‘dressed up’ with her own bedcover - we recognize it from a couple of other photos - that is dramatically len gthening her figure and floating in the waters, flowers in the girls’ hands and hair. Sanguinetti is often working in the space between fact and fiction when she lets the girls play a repertoire of roles but at the same time captures them during idle moments of distraction, as seen in The Dreamer from 2002-, where Belinda, lost in thought, is quietly laying in the green. It is striking how natural and disarmingly relaxed the girls come across, even when they enact a role. Sanguinetti’s presence is hardly felt, putting the viewer into her place.
The exhibition covers the whole period of the sequel until today, showing the two girls as children to the point where they enter the adult world they once imagined. The fantastical tableaux of personal dreams and lively imagination of the early images give way to more meditative moments as the two cousins shape their own realities, encounter the fragility of changing relationships, and confront early motherhood.
Alessandra Sanguinetti was born in New York City in 1968 and currently lives and works in both Buenos Aires and New York City. She joined Magnum Photos as a nominee in 2007. Her work has been exhibited extensively abroad, including a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, and is part of several collections including the MoMA, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Fonds national d’art contemporain, France and the International Center of Photography, New York. She has been awarded numerous grants and prizes, including the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Hasselblad Foundation Grant, and Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award.
Exhibition "Alessandra Sanguinetti - The Adventures of Guille and Belinda“,
28 March until 30 May 2009
Vernissage: 28 March 2009, 5-8pm