BETWEEN OCEANS
an installation by Luciana Merino Coca
09 December 2022 at 19h at Hectolitre (Trait d'Union)
An already known space is often an invitation to reorganize ideas. "In Between
Oceans" is configured, as well as an entry point to the artist's universe, to her desire to
save certain images from daily invisibility and to find an experimentation of reality
through the recontextualization of photographs perhaps forgotten in their meaning. .
If photographing is embalming a memory.It’s time to question what is preserved when
a family moment is abandoned. During a stay in Rio de Janeiro in 2019, Merino found
in a space of recovered objects negatives of family photographs, memories of a day at
the beach, some portraits, spaces; only vestiges, no more than traces of light.
This installation is a re-interpretative work on other people's memories. The unprinted
images were hung around the room. On them, projections of the Pacific compare sea
and family. With the sea of Callao (Perú), which is present and a memory of the artist's
childhood, projected onto it, the photos have regained movement to the point of
becoming a metaphor for the wave of time over people, but above all they have
become become objects of significance for all present.
It is no longer a family or the trace of a portrait. It is the allegory that you want to read,
everyone's family, new memories forming.
The reconstruction of the image distorted by the lack of light and by the light projected
on it is the obligation of the viewer.
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Luciana Merino Coca (1990, Callao) is constantly looking for self-representation tools. She accumulates and collects images with which she feels in some way identified at a certain moment. Subsequently, she intervene and generate new scenes as a therapeutic means in order to communicate personal narratives and buried memories to speak on topics such as memory, family, identity and feminism. She works with photography, collage, mixmedia, experimental video and installation Studied audiovisual communication at the Peruvian Institute of Advertising (IPP). Later, followed a career in professional photography at the Centro de la Imagen in Lima, Peru, graduating with first place in a thesis project. She has taken courses and diplomas on experimental visual arts in different cultural institutions, including EAV Parque Lage (BR), La Hydra(MX) and exhibited in group shows in Lima, CDMX, Malaga and Rio de Janeiro.