Ditifet
2000 – 2002
– 2000. Benvinguts a la societat de l’espectacle. ACM. Mataró. (One-person exhibition)
– 2001. Generación 2001. Madrid, Sevilla, Valladolid, Barcelona, Bilbao, València. (Group exhibition)
– 2001.Ditifet. Espai E. HAAC. Vic. (One-person exhibition)
– 2001. Crisi d’Identitat. El Tint. Banyoles. (One-person exhibition)
– 2003. Imatges subtitulades. Fundació Espais d’art contemporani. (Group exhibition)
Color photographs 100 x 100 cm. mounted on aluminum. Five editions of 22 photos.
—
This project analyzes the tension between the cultural hegemony and subaltern cultures, and constitutes an investigation into the limitations of visual and verbal languages through the medium of photography and its subsequent position on the scene. This relationship is explored through an extensive series of images derived from the selection, cataloguing and illustration of popular refrains.
The intention of Ditifet is to produce a visual catalogue of idiomatic expressions. The compilation of Catalan sayings is articulated in two ways, by being translated literally into English, with the result of the refrain loosing its original sense of the meaning, and by the making a literal translation of the sentence photographically. The resulting images constitute a heterogeneous collection of fragmentary statements that can develop simultaneously or by intersection; trivialities and apparently mundane activities that, for all which is hidden and for the absurd that they may seem, return to us our fragility and disorientation before this fragmentary perception of reality.
This project has emerged from the cultural representations of language and for the problematic relationship existing between the local and the global. The verification of iconic potentiality and the perversity at the bottom of some of the images created by popular language are used to ad credence to the limitations of such relationships. In everyday speech, the use of idiom is automatic, without stopping to consider the metaphorical dregs from which it is nurtured; this work updates the visual potential incorporated in these idioms and it does so with a marked sense of irony.