A glamourous and exotic stage play.
Margarita Dittborn has been passionate about photography since she was thirteen years old, when she received her first camera – a reflex camera – from her artist father. She now uses the technique of photomontage, a process of making composite photographs by cutting and joining a number of other photographs, to produce whimsical and sometimes eccentric images of portraits, landscapes and still lifes,that are completely seamless. Dittborn not only draws her inspiration from her own life experiences, but also makes much effort to study history for references on contents for her new ideas. Her exhibition will feature mainly three series, “Lovesick Woman” (Enferma de Amor), the “Scene” series (Escena) and “Little Animals in the Land of Plenty” (Little Animals in the País de la Abundancia).
“Lovesick Woman” is a series of photographs that appear to depict scenes from a vibrant stage play, frozen in time. The protagonist, the lovesick woman, portrays the loss and suffering that comes with the desire to possess, and represents the relationship between old love and melancholy as an inseparable disease. In one of the photographs, a man’s head is served as food on a tray, drawing a parallel between addiction to love and our daily appetite for food. The artist adds humour to the series, with props of floating vegetables, ceramic cats and wooden ducks that somehow blend harmoniously into each scene, yet seizing the audience’s attention and curiosity at the same time.
A similar style is observed with the use of chiaroscuro, whereby the artist has given her subject a lively presentation, with the theatrical employment of light usually against a dark background, in her “Scene” series. Part of Dittborn’s portraits, the style and composition, comes from influence from the Baroque paintings she has seen at the Fine Arts Museum in her home city. Her photography articulates certain familiarities within our common knowledge while also illuminating us with its exotic sense and a charm of the unfamiliar.
The artist’s obsession with food and animals is reflected in her still life series, where decorative objects, display animals, fabric fruits and plastic toys frequently appear in prominent positions. On closer examination, they seem visually eccentric with disproportionate scales; a visual illusion created with the resizing of these elements during the digital photomontage process. The result is a dynamism and freshness that brings life to her otherwise lifeless objects.
