Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena

Assemblage for Prinzessinnengarten
W.E.R, concrete, pvc, aprx. 23 cm,  2013
Campaign Banner II, collage, aprx. 210 x 200 cm, 2012
Campaign Banner III, collage, aprx. 210 x 420 cm, 2012


My work for The First Prinzessennin Garten Outdoor Sculpture Triennial entails a small assemblage of different pieces that are all parts of a mental landscape. The starting point is a letter from my mother to me in the form of a children's book that was created while she was incarcerated during the early days of the military dictatorship in the 70's Uruguay. The letter serves as a background for the presented objects: a modified football (with concrete filling) which we used as a malevolent initiation rite as children and two banners that deals with slogans and poetry on the verge of political activism. The South Will Rise Again, originally a slogan from the nostalgic racist America suggests here a different south, below the equator with a much stronger and urgent need of rising. Another banner deals with the poem To Forgein Lands by Walt Whitman which has been processed through all European languages and then back to English, using Google Translate as a digital cut-up device.