Exhibition Preview

DRCLAS

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) buzzed with the oohs and aahs of arsty Harvard affiliates at last Wednesday’s opening of photographer Jorge Mario Munera’s exhibition, “Portraits of an Invisible Country.” The international attendees sipped wine as they toured Colombia through the insightful pictures and intimate write-ups of the native artist.

Colombia’s identity, captured by Munera’s 52 black and white prints, is far from Hollywood’s rendering of a country ruled by the decadence of warring drug lords. The collection includes prints of a boy bathing, a pair of old platform shoes, a hospital room and a band from the Fiesta de San Pedro Munera, which together create an illuminating dialogue with his homeland.

Munera’s work is the sixth exhibition displayed by Art Forum, the DRCLAS’s effort to support Latin American artists in the early stages of their careers. But Jose Luis Falconi, curator of the exhibition and Art Forum Coordinator, believes Munera’s to be the best yet.

After the DRCLAS’s Director of Publication June C. Erlick encouraged the thoughtful and unassuming Munera to submit his portfolio last year, he was selected over more than 100 other contestants in the Art Forum competition. Falconi commented in his gallery talk that the strength of the material made assembling the exhibition easy.

Munera’s show represents a journey through an unknown country and came as a culmination of two decades of travel throughout Colombia. Each of the five sections of the exhibit displays both a geographical region of Colombia and a different photographic approach, beginning with the Pacific region and the “studio medium shot” and ending with the Amazonian region and the “candid close-up.” This careful, if not obvious, organization highlights the diversity of Munera’s methods and subjects.

In both taking and exhibiting his photographs, Munera aims to encourage people to come out of the solitude caused by recent political events in Colombia. He seeks to recreate eroded public space in which Colombians as well as foreigners may see the true spirit of a country that has otherwise become invisible.

Munera’s passion to produce a testament of his country stems from childhood. Growing up in the city of Medellín, he showed early talent as a photographer. In 1998 he won the First National Prize of Photography in Colombia, and he has garnered numerous other distinctions despite a national climate politically and economically adverse to artistic endeavor.

The photographs now on display communicate a clear political message at once deeply rooted in Colombia and applicable worldwide. A series of prints entitled “Recyclers, Cartucho St.” captures individuals rising like pillars from the poverty and violence that surround them. In the text alongside these pictures, Munera explains that just months after he produced the prints, his subjects—victims of an armed conflict in the country—were expelled from their street. The event coincided with the ascension to power of Alvaro Uribe Velez, the current president of Colombia.

Munera uses irony and symbolism to convey specific ideas to his viewer. In “Circus Tent,” another photograph taken in the slums of Bogota, a small, dilapidated tent that reads “Bienvenido al Circo” in faded red letters gapes open, revealing the humble iron bed frame that someone calls home. Munera’s portrait titled, “Destiny Stone” shows a bright-eyed boy peering through a hole in a boulder.

Falconi pointed out in his gallery talk on Wednesday that Munera does not erase himself from the picture. Instead, every picture presents a portrait that arises from a negotiation between photographer and subject. Because merely carrying a camera can be risky business in Colombia and Munera’s interest is in capturing people as they are, he often sets up private studios where his subjects can feel at ease.

When asked what reaction his camera receives in Colombia, Munera replied that at first, it is met with great joy. The photographer says he observes that people are eager to see themselves as they really are, just as he is interested in portraying Colombia as it really exists. He believes that the desire to know what we look like will encourage Colombians to identify one another as brothers, and to come together under more than a flag and a government.

In “Portraits of an Invisible Country” Munera is able to capture individual and collective identities that deliver a realistic but hopeful message to his viewer.

“Portraits of an Invisible Country” will be on display until June 30 at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 61 Kirkland St.

—Isabelle B. Bolton