Susana Quevedo
There’s something quieter than sleep | This series comprises several self-portraits I made over the past few years. This obsessive need to turn the camera to myself became the only way to cope with the fear of disappearance and the ever-changing nature of my body riddled with vulnerability, as if it were a disease caused by the accumulation of time, fear, and memories.
Adding several layers of black charcoal to cover up the printed area of the photographic image, made it seem like it was fading to complete blackness; I then used a flat brush to remove the excessive amount of charcoal in order to make possible to get a glimpse of the photograph hidden beneath this black surface. One looks at these blackened photographs as if they were in the realm of memory invocation: memories are dark and distant as if they somehow inhabited the core of blackened soil.
This is a project about not wanting to be seen and choosing how not to be seen, an act of self-erasure. It is also about how the spectator looks at these images, it’s a way of playing with the gaze of the spectator. These images require you look at them with full attention and time, but simultaneously you’re unable to see the photograph clearly. You will get a glimpse of the subtle lines of my face or my hands, of the obscured shape of my petrified body.
Something you cannot see completely, something still and quiet, like the darkness inside the body, like the body asleep in the dark. www.cargocollective.com/susanaquevedo
