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AMPARO SEGARRA. Collage and Ethnic Art

16 March, 2017 – 12 April, 2018 Room Amparo Segarra. Second floor

The exhibition Amparo Segarra. Collage and Ethnic Art begins its itinerary with a showcase containing several elements, such as a photograph of Amparo in her New York house, surrounded by a series of ethnic objects that she herself had meticulously arranged. Amparo is posing beside photographs, paintings, African objects and a large Mexican tree of life; these objects now form part of the Fundación’s collections. This interest in ethnic objects is reflected in Granell’s library, which is exemplified by the book Magic Books from México (1953). We can also see three records from Granell’s Personal Archive, featuring newspaper clippings about the sale of three African masks. Amparo’s collages feature the use of images of different ethnic groups, which she often contrasts culturally with characters from different times and places. On display above the showcase is the collage Untitled, which could relate to the Granell’s apartment itself and features a couple in a room whose walls are entirely decorated.
We then come to a section devoted to the Latin American culture, with luxuriant landscapes as we see in Señora camuflada and La botita de la marquesa (1982); her passion for colours is expressed in the clothes of the characters in the collages Lechuza solitaria and El huevo de Colón (1989). Completing this part of the exhibition is a large mask of the Diablo Yaré from Venezuela, an object used in traditional dances that is made of painted papier-mâché.
The large mask of Antílope Karanse dominates the following wall. It was made by the Wango society, which belongs to the Mossi people in Burkina Fasso (West Africa). These masks are used in land fertility rites. The horns are associated with the figure of the male antelope and represent fertility and fruitfulness; they are also attributed with divine powers. On the left side, we find deserted landscapes as in No es la isla de Pascua (2006), along with a castle in the desert in the Untitled collage and infertile settings as in Cactus. These scenes contrast with the right side featuring many more fertile collages. Conejo Atrapado features a great variety of animals. Below it, Untitled depicts foods and women as givers of life. We can also establish a parallel between the mask’s ritual quality and the characters’ garments. Lastly, in the Untitled collage we discover a setting of green fields and a woman breastfeeding her child, also related to fertility.
If we continue with the itinerary around the exhibition we can contemplate four collages that could refer to África, Cebras perdidas, Untitled, De Egipto hasta el autobús and Caballos pastando, which present a series of animals such as horses, zebras, dromedaries and buffalos. Most of them are used as means of transport, and they are contrasted with elements from a more industrialised world, such as turbine assemblies and buses. These cultural and temporal contrasts are typical of Amparo Segarra’s collages.
We now observe a group devoted to the American Indians that could be dedicated to the Native Americans of USA,  in which kachinas stand out: Oso, Pahana and Ogresa. Kachinas are ancestral spirits of the Hopi Indians of New Mexico. During ritual dances, the Hopi Indians wear the kachinas’ clothes. These dolls are scale copies of the dancers and often represent animals, gods or natural phenomena such as the sun, the dawn, etc. They are given to the children watching the ceremonies and each of the dolls is made and painted individually, featuring a great variety of types and morphologies. Beside the kachinas we can see several collages depicting migratory movements, as in La emigración de las aves (2005) with an American landscape in the background, and we see them again in Llega la caravana (2004), and in Las monjas de clausura se divierten (2004), in which a group of nuns is walking through the mountains.
Finally, two collages and the morería mask entitled Mono, which was made in Guatemala and used in the Deer Dance. During their stay in Guatemala, the Granells had contact with the peculiar world of indigenous dances and were able to obtain several of these masks, which now belong to the Eugenio Granell Foundation. Amparo used a lot of monkey cut-outs, as we see in the collages A favor del viento (2004) and Untitled.

 

 

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