Sandra Montero - Visual Artist

2011-08-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

2010-12-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

MOVEMENTS BETWEEN SOLIDS AND GHOSTS - COMING OF AGE. Alex Brahim
MOVIMIENTOS ENTRE SÓLIDOS Y FANTASMAS - COMING OF AGE. Alex Brahim

EPILOGUE. Jorge Latorre
EPILOGO. Jorge Latorre

2010-02-12T15:08:00.000-08:00

..UNINHABITED
..2011
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..UNINHABITED se desarrolla en un edificio estancado en el proceso de construcción. La parálisis es un estado

..al que se enfrenta la arquitectura contemporánea en el contexto actual de nuestras ciudades. Este edificio fue
..proyectado en época de bonanza económica para hospedar temporalmente a deportistas de élite. Actualmente
..sus instalaciones deportivas (piscinas, gimnasios o campos de entrenamiento) así como su privilegiada situación
..geográfica se han convertido en un reclamo para variedad de animales, humedades, mohos, podredumbres
..y demás inquilinos.

..Esta circunstancia me permitió irrumpir con la presencia humana en el flujo de vida del ecosistema que albergaba

..el edificio. Con esta estrategia resalto intencionadamente una situación conmovedora que no soluciona el conflicto

..existente pero justifica la necesidad de actuación en este tipo de escenarios.
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..-

..Thanks - Agradecimientos: Álvaro Siza, Panticosa Resort.

2010-02-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

..M/M2
..2011
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..(1´2, 1, to measure the space).......................................................................................(1´2, 1, to contain the space)
..(1´2, 1, medir el espacio)................................................................................................(1´2, 1, contener el espacio)

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..M/M2 es un proyecto que recoge la investigación realizada sobre el espacio frontón, una edificación de la que es deudora
..la arquitectura moderna. Este volumen prismático es construido sin elementos asistentes en su interior (ni estructura ni
..particiones). Una serie de números y líneas pintadas sobre sus paredes y suelo ordenan el espacio al generar el sistema
..de coordenadas cartesianas, consiguiendo que todos los puntos estén definidos por una coordenada exacta en el plano
..de juego. La capacidad de organización es tan grande que alrededor de esta construcción el lugar se urbaniza. Ordena
..el mundo.
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..Con estas premisas comienzo mi aproximación al espacio frontón. Tomo como referencia su sistema de coordenadas para
..definir mis diferentes posiciones como un punto (X, Y) respecto a un origen (0, 0). A cada punto le asigno una acción en el
..espacio (como contener, ocupar o atravesar) que corresponde al desarrollo de mi cuerpo en el eje Z del sistema.

..El planteamiento del proyecto analiza el modo en que todas las localizaciones forman parte de un sistema de referencia con
..un origen determinado. Todas las acciones que están ocurriendo en este instante están teniendo lugar en un punto concreto
..del espacio, no pueden desarrollarse dos acciones simultáneamente en una localización idéntica. Este trabajo reflexiona
..sobre cómo la posición física que ocupamos y desde la que observamos condiciona la posición de los demás. El momento
..particular de cada persona esta íntimamente relacionado con el del resto.

..(5, 7´5, to take up the space)..............................................(3, 2´5, to take up the space)............................................(0, 1, to take up the space)
..(5, 7´5, ocupar el espacio)..................................................(3, 2´5, ocupar el espacio).................................................(0, 1, ocupar el espacio)
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..(0´4, 0´4, to contain the space)..........................................(9´5, 3, to cross the space)................................................(2´5, 0´2, to measure the space)

..(0´4, 0´4, contener el espacio)...........................................(9´5, 3, atravesar el espacio).............................................(2´5, 0´2, medir el espacio)

..(3´4, 1, to cross the space)................................................(11, 0, to take up the space).............................................(1´9, 0´3, to provide the space)

..(3´4, 1, atravesar el espacio).............................................(11, 0, ocupar el espacio)..................................................(1´9, 0´3, proporcionar el espacio)

..(2´5, 3, to take up and to contain the space)..........................................................................(11, 7, to take up and to contain the space)

..(2´5, 3, ocupar y contener el espacio)....................................................................................(11, 7, ocupar y contener el espacio)

2010-02-06T10:39:00.000-08:00

..VOID VESSELS
..2011

..VOID VESSELS se desarrolla durante un estadio de inactividad de un complejo acuático en Jyväskylä (Finlandia). Esta edificación

..se ve sometida a un proceso de remodelación para la mejora de sus instalaciones, circunstancia que permite profundizar en las

..relaciones existentes entre construcción y ecologías humanas.
.

..Ante la ausencia de agua estas arquitecturas adquieren una nueva dimensión que responde visualmente a las conexiones entre
..grados de dificultad (profundidad), niveles de aprendizaje (dimensiones) y metodología funcional (formas). Por otro lado, la misma
..circunstancia revela características escultóricas y escenográficas asociadas a nuevos usos y consideraciones sobre estos espacios.

..La forma visual del proyecto se estructura en una serie de fotografías en las que se muestran los vasos vacíos desde puntos de vista
..no posibles durante el transcurso de vida normal del complejo. Al mismo tiempo se utiliza la instalación corporal como experimentación
..para buscar nuevas formas de conexión con la arquitectura revelada.

..En este proyecto planteo cómo a partir de un hecho insólito, circunstancial y aparentemente contradictorio –el vaciado de una piscina–
..se descubren realidades espaciales que aportan sentido a cuestiones que se daban por supuestas o pasaban inadvertidas en el uso
..cotidiano.

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2010-02-01T01:11:00.000-08:00

SANDRA MONTERO
info@sandramontero.com
ph. +34 616 351 403
-
ANTONIA PUYO GALLERY
Madre Sacramento 31 - 1
50004 Zaragoza, Spain
www.antoniapuyo.com
galeria@antoniapuyo.com
ph. +34 976 469 530

2010-01-31T22:43:00.000-08:00

..PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE
..2010
.

..Inkjet print on cotton paper.
..115 x 157 cm. each
..Inyección de tinta sobre papel de algodón.
..115 x 157 cm. c/u.
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..PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE is the only project to date in which Sandra is accompanied by other people in her proposed
..spatial approximation. This peculiarity, together with the fact that the location they are in is an old people’s home and its
..residents –elderly people with Alzheimer’s- are the guests makes this work a special landmark in her career.
.

..Using practically all the strategies that she uses in her processes, with PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE Montero achieves

..what is probably her most troubled account of the body and spatiality. In limbo between life and death in an organic sense,

..her fellow subjects represent a space in themselves, that of old age, which lurks confined to homes that centrifuge their

..residents in oblivion, assigning them the social location of death.

..There, Sandra’s ghost, active and melancholic, blends in terms of sense more than ever with the spectrality she pursues,

..acting as a contrast to the impassive, absorbed appearance of the elderly figures and as a symbol of a twofold announcement,
..that of death and that of reflection of youth, both ghostly spaces from that point in which life, apparently, no longer contemplates
..its past or its death announced.
.

..The dramatic, vulnerable, corporeal nature of the characters is accentuated by the emptiness of the absolutely black plane,

..the sequences on the wall with splashes of black paint or the moments in which the artist takes up a position strategically

..alone: with her back turned in the depths of a waiting room, thrown into a corner on the floor or hanging from the handholds

..of what looks like a physical rehabilitation area.

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..In this questioning movement with her scene companions, Montero achieves a tacit two-way pact: she pays tribute to their

..persons, praise which is crystallised in the epic tone of her pictures, whilst she also proposes empathetic involvement,

..manifest in the subtlety and air of freshness with which she addresses her interaction. In the state of transition between

..these emotions in which the artist has achieved a greater flow of vertexes in her duality, in her capacity to redefine the ritual

..idea that underlies all expression of identity, acknowledging the temporality that structures her processes in the finitude

..of the line of vital time.

..Text: ALEX BRAHIM

..PRESENCIA DE UNA AUSENCIA es el único proyecto hasta la fecha en el que Sandra se acompaña de otras personas

..en su propuesta de aproximación espacial. Dicha peculiaridad, sumada al hecho de que el recinto que le acoge es un hogar
..geriátrico y sus habitantes -ancianos con alzheimer- los invitados, hace de este trabajo un hito particular en su trayectoria.

..Volcando prácticamente todas las estrategias que aborda en sus procesos, Montero logra con PRESENCIA DE UNA AUSENCIA
..el que probablemente sea su relato más problematizado sobre el cuerpo y la espacialidad. En un limbo entre la vida y la
..muerte en un sentido orgánico, sus coprotagonistas representan un espacio en sí mismo, el de la tercera edad, que subyace
..confinada en hogares de acogida que centrifugan a sus habitantes en el olvido, otorgándoles el lugar social de la muerte.

..Allí el fantasma de Sandra, vivaz y melancólico, entra más que nunca en fusión de sentido con la espectralidad que persigue,
..ejerciendo como contraste del aspecto hierático y ensimismado de los ancianos y como símbolo de una doble anunciación,
..la de la muerte y la del reflejo de la juventud, espacios fantasmales ambos desde ese punto en que la vida, al parecer, no
..contempla ya su pasado ni tampoco el anunciado final.

..La corporeidad vulnerable y dramática de los personajes se acentúa con el vacío del plano negro absoluto, las secuencias
..sobre el muro con chorros de pintura negra, o los momentos en los que la artista se sitúa sola estratégicamente: de espaldas
..al fondo de una sala de espera, arrojada sobre el suelo en una esquina, o descolgándose desde las agarraderas de lo que
..parece ser un área de terapia rehabilitación física.

..En ese movimiento de interpelación con sus compañeros de escena, Montero logra un tácito pacto de dos sendas: rinde
..homenaje a sus figuras, elogio que se cristaliza en el tono épico de sus imágenes, mientras plantea una implicación empática,
..manifiesta en la sutileza y el aire de frescura con que aborda su interacción. Es en el estado de transición entre estas emociones
..donde la artista ha logrado un mayor flujo de vértices en su desdoblamiento, en su capacidad para redefinir la idea ritual que
..subyace a todo gesto identitario, reconociendo la temporalidad que estructura sus procesos en la finitud de la línea de tiempo vital.

..Texto: ALEX BRAHIM

..CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE HUARTE. (Photos LUIS AZANZA)

2010-01-31T03:18:00.000-08:00

THE WHITE LINE

2012

Video, no sound, 7´18´´

Vídeo, sin audio, 7´18´´

"Much as the nomad trajectory follows habitual trails or paths, their function is not that of the sedentary path, which consists

in spreading human beings out in an enclosed space, assigning each person his or her part and regulating communication

between the parts. The nomad trajectory does the opposite, it spreads human beings (or animals) out in an open, undefined,

non-communicating space."

GILLES DELEUZE, FELIX GUATTARI. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1980.

Via FRANCESCO CARERI - Walkscapes

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There is one kind of performance that we could describe as sedentary and other that we could tag as nomad. In the nomad

movement, individuals manage within the process, the object and the space in which they stand. They move and constantly
change their position and goals, whereas the object keeps weirdly immobile. They obstinately shift the point of view in order
to make decisions. To act is to define a trajectory, to think from within the facts, the programs and the space. There is not
an outcome and if it happens it is a non-calculated and remained consequence. Knowledge is generated and arranged with
every new objective, and then we moved towards them. Experience is learned via itinerary, being derived. It is, at the end,
a spiral procedure.

THE WHITE LINE is a nomad project. The approach of the work suggests learning by experience, this is, deriving out

from the multiply options set up by the crossing lines. And yet, we don’t find general evidences of the layout but partial ones.
This way, the repetitive performance (progressing over a white line) is transformed into the result, together with the entire
practice that has lead to it, all the possible consequences, connections and abandoned streams.

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The visual work –recorded on a mute video for 7 minutes– reflects on how the constant and even subversive movement is

determined by the system in which it takes place, as the processes integrate and absorb new data from the changing
conditions and the new agents on the scene. The freedom of action is restricted by the circumstances.

“Por más que el trayecto nómada siga pistas o caminos habituales, su función no es la del camino sedentario, que consiste

en distribuir a los hombres en un espacio cerrado, asignando a cada uno su parte y regulando la comunicación entre

las partes. El trayecto nómada hace lo contrario, distribuye los hombres (o los animales) en un espacio abierto, indefinido,

no comunicante.”

GILLES DELEUZE – FÉLIX GUATTARI. Mil mesetas. Capitalismo y esquizofrenia, 1980.

Vía FRANCESCO CARERI - Walkscapes

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Existe un tipo de actuación que podríamos calificar de sedentaria y otro que podríamos calificar de nómada. En el movimiento

nómada el hombre se desenvuelve dentro del proceso, del objeto y del espacio en el que se encuentra. Se mueve de posición
y de objetivos constantemente, mientras el objeto permanece extrañamente inmóvil. Cambia tenazmente de punto de vista
para tomar las decisiones. Actuar es definir una trayectoria. Pensar desde dentro de las cosas, de los programas, desde dentro
del espacio. No hay exterioricidad, y si se produce es una consecuencia no calculada, un resto. Los conocimientos son generados
y ordenados con cada nuevo objetivo, y nosotros vamos hacia ellos. La experiencia se aprende por itinerarios. Derivándose.
Es un procedimiento espiral.
.

THE WHITE LINE es un proyecto nómada. El planteamiento de trabajo propone aprender por experiencias, esto es, derivándose
en la multiplicidad de opciones establecidas por los encuentros entre líneas. Pero no hay documentos generales del trazado
sino parciales. De este modo, la performance repetitiva (avanzar por la línea blanca) se convierte en el resultado junto con todo
el transcurso que ha llevado hasta él, todas sus variaciones posibles, sus conexiones y las ramas de desarrollo abandonas.
.

Este trabajo visual –registrado en 7 minutos de vídeo sin audición– reflexiona sobre cómo el movimiento constante e incluso
subversivo está condicionado por el sistema en el que se desarrolla, de la misma forma que los procesos integran o absorben
nuevos datos por las condiciones cambiantes o los agentes recién aparecidos del entorno. La libertad de acción queda limitada
por las circunstancias.

2010-01-24T03:21:00.000-08:00

..JUST MADRID 3. Contemporary Art Fair

..Antonia Puyo Gallery

..-

..16 - 19 Feb, 2012

..» more

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..PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE

..Solo show at HUARTE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE

..Until March 3, 2012

..» more

..NICE TO MEET YOU
..Solo show at Corner Space, Obra Social Caja Madrid.

..Curated by CARLOTA SANTABARBARA

..-

..8 Nov - 30 Oct, 2011

..» more

..SPACE AND BODY

..Prize! Young Artist Award 2011

..Navarre Youth Institute

..» more

2010-01-22T04:23:00.002-08:00

..SPACE AND BODY (WORK PROCESSES)
..2010

..Work process on gap
..Proceso de trabajo sobre grieta

..Work process on door
..Proceso de trabajo sobre puerta

..Work process on pipe
..Proceso de trabajo sobre tubería

..Inkjet print on cotton paper

..A series of 37 photographs

..28 x 35 cm. each
..Inyección de tinta sobre papel de algodón

..Serie de 37 fotografías

..28 x 35 cm. c/u.

..Este trabajo es una investigación sobre el espacio público y sus problemáticas,
..concretamente aquellos fragmentos de la realidad que molestan visualmente
..por el estado en que se encuentran. Planteo una involucración corpórea en la
..deconstrucción material para explorar diversas conexiones más allá de lo
..meramente visual. Registro aproximaciones corporales a lo repulsivo para
..ofrecerlas como nuevos modos de percepción y construcción simbólica de la
..relación entre el cuerpo y el espacio.
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..

..Video. Show at Contemporary Art Centre Huarte

2010-01-21T10:49:00.001-08:00

SANDRA MONTERO was born in Spain, in 1983

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2012
Presence of an absence, solo show. Contemporary Art Centre Huarte, Navarre
JUST MADRID 3. Antonia Puyó Gallery, Madrid

Solo show. Sala Juana Francés, Zaragoza (upcoming)

Group show. Antonia Puyó Gallery, Zaragoza (upcoming)
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2011
Second Prize. Encuentros, Young Navarrese Artists Award. Government of Navarre
Prize for Artist under 30 years, Santa Isabel de Portugal Art Prize. Diputación de Zaragoza
Secuencias 2, group show. Antonia Puyó Gallery, Zaragoza
Young Navarrese Artists, group show. Contemporary Art Centre Huarte, Navarre
Nice to meet you, solo show. Corner Project. Caja Madrid, Zaragoza
Visión emocional, group show. Camón Aznar Museum, Zaragoza
Grant in Creative Arts. Government of Navarre
The Photographic Dictionary, online publication. Lindley Warren
50 conversaciones, online publication. Adrián Volt
Carpaccio Magazine, publication. Atem books

2010
First Prize, Young Artist Award. Government of Aragon
Artist in residence. Movic, movilidad creativa. Red Española de Albegues Juveniles + INJUVE
Eutopía 10, Festival Internacional de Creación Joven, Córdoba
Special Mention, Young Artist Award. Pamplona City Council
Aragon Young Artist, group show. Itinerant
Postales desde el limbo, group show. Cuarto Espacio, Zaragoza
Grant in Creative Arts. Government of Navarre
Young Artists, group show. La Ciudadela, Pamplona

2009
Honorary Mention, Young Artist Award. Government of Aragon
Aragon Young Artist, group show. Itinerant
Vestir el arte, solo show. Espacio Slide, Pamplona
Equilibrios, solo show. El Tostadero, Pamplona

2008
Degree in Architecture. University of Navarre

2010-01-11T07:37:00.000-08:00

I try to observe, analyze and think about the spatial and environmental context that surrounds us. I use the

artistic performance as a tool for understanding our closest reality, the space as a whole. Working processes

follow one another on an attempt for learning and comprehending throughout experience by performative actions

carried out with my body. This way of operating allows me to generate discontinuities on the reading of the spatial

realities and projected architectures that structure our settings. The issue is to realize that space doesn’t make
up our actions but supports them.

Trato de observar, analizar y reflexionar en torno al contexto espacial y ambiental que nos rodea. Utilizo la

práctica artística como una herramienta de conocimiento de la realidad circundante más próxima. Los procesos

de trabajo se suceden en un intento de aprender y comprender a través de la experiencia mediante acciones

de carácter performativo realizadas con mi cuerpo. Esta manera de operar me permite generar discontinuidades

en la lectura de realidades espaciales y arquitecturas proyectadas que configuran nuestro entorno. La cuestión

es ser consciente de que el espacio no configura nuestras acciones sino que las soporta.

2010-01-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

EPILOGUE.

Although the word has fallen out of favour, SANDRA MONTERO is an artist. And at the same time, she is an architect and
a photographer, meaning she is at the forefront of artistic investigation, for these languages, together with audiovisual media,
are currently thriving. Architecture and photography share many common features, and maybe that is why they have evolved,
together with the third discipline, in a similar fashion. Like architecture, photograph is a tactile art form –according to the ideas
of WALTER BENJAMIN, who equated the two languages through their immediate reception, more vital than contemplative in
nature. In terms of both form and concept, the two place special emphasis on the space marked by light, with its variations,
and invite apperception of the different material textures, gradations of light and shade, and reflections. The humility with which
photography sees the world has not only taught us to see the understated beauty of modern architecture, but has also opened
up a new type of beauty to us which shuns the picturesque in search of new paths of experimentation and other ways of seeing
a world that is becoming progressively more urban.

As FONTCUBERTA points out in LA CÁMARA DE PANDORA (G. G. Barcelona, 2010, P. 145), “The shift to modernity can be
interpreted as drawing nearer to the object. This dynamic of convergence occurs upon a mise en abyme of the old myth and
culminates in a new balance of forces in which the subject and individual freedom are to prevail. Awareness that landscape in
the XX century should aspire to realise identity, objectify an interior landscape consistent with the physical world emerges”.
Indeed, from Cubism onwards, the hierarchies between subject and object have vanished in all avant-garde proposals, the
unitary space has broken up and the landscape has come nearer, a laboratory of subjective experiences that no longer sparks
the amazement of distance. And so the urban landscape comes to the foreground, as an inseparable part of modern life, with
all its contradictions.

Inspired by an urban landscape in constant transformation, many artists have taken on board the suggestion of the ephemeral
identity, defined by mobility as a recurring theme. Like the graffiti that adorns walls or travels on the side of underground trains,
symbolizing the most ephemeral aspect of anonymous passage. Other themes inseparable from the urban are globalization,
multiculturalism, etc. Maybe Sandra is unaware of these precedents, but her art reminds one a great deal of the experiences of
ANA MENDIETA, who makes her own identity a central theme in her artistic work and does so through her own physical presence
both in the world and in the pictures that photographically record her performances. Such inspiration opened up conceptual paths
for photographers like CINDY SHERMAN or DUANE MICHALS, whose series also greatly recall attempts at capturing an ephemeral
identity in the reflection of a semi-urban landscape (for it is of a domesticated nature, as though in outlying areas), which is what
Sandra does in her work REMEMBER ME.

In other series, Sandra echoes the experimental formalism of HOLGER TRÜLZSCH, and his painted nudes that transform into
scaly walls or moldy doors and windows, creating confusion between the visual and the visionary. In contrast to the rugged Nordic
sentiment and traditional habitat of Trülzsch’s photographs, Sandra plays with the sensitivity of the modern urban world, disorientated
and de romanticized, which allows her, both in her clean forms and her worn, chipped work, to explore the more tactile characters
of the visual matter of architecture itself. Sandra offers her very presence to these spaces, the presence of the subject who
interposes between reality and the photographic image that portrays it, now no longer a document, but rather a concept.

In PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE, the presence of the photographer replaces that of the aura of the characters portrayed, elderly
subjects suffering from Alzheimer's disease. That aura which permitted Barthes’ photographic punctum: that which is “given as an
act of grace”. The punctum allowed BARTHES to recover the vitality of his own dead mother; and, inevitably, it showed him that
all photographs represent a promise of eternity, at the expense of revealing ourselves as future corpses. The punctum was,
therefore, both an emotive reminder of life and a fateful awareness of loss. There is punctum, in Barthes’ sense of life and death
appearing in unison, in Sandra’s photographs, but this punctum does not depend on the loss of a loved one who stays alive in
the image thanks to photogenic qualities. Such photogénie is not present in these photographs of living souls, which remind us,
all too much, of those portraits of the dead.

Let us dwell for a moment on the subject of the photogenic, one of the photographic terms that has aroused greatest interest when
reflecting upon the new, unique possibilities of this form of capturing reality in an instant. According to the more traditional theories,
photogénie is not a quality exclusive to reality, nor is it a simple effect of the optical device, nor the result of a trick by the operator;
it stems from a three-way alliance necessarily established between model, camera and photographer. The photogenic only
manifests itself as the sparkle of an uncontrollable latent power leading to sublimity. It can only be summoned, invited, entreated.
Propitious circumstances can be prepared, but as in prayers or in the invocations of spiritualists, whether the photogenic answers
the call depends on the schemes of providence (FONTCUBERTA, LA CÁMARA DE PANDORA, P. 20-21).

The faces that look out at us in Sandra's photographs are not photogenic: nor do they reveal or hide anything. They are the
presence of a death announced or of a life that no longer exists to the full. So the title Presencia de una ausencia could not be more
apt. And for that very reason, the presence of the photographer in her own images is so necessary, for in addition to manifesting
her personal emotive punctum, it is a tribute to the surroundings, to that concealed presence of a care that lends meaning to the
semi-absent life of the elderly. For between the two extremes of taking photographs in order to guillotine time, freeze the expression,
fossilise the body (BARTHES) and that of clinging to instants from life that allow us to forget the existence of death (as KRAKAUER
defended), photography is also capable of reminding us that there is not such a great distance between the quick and the dead.

We insist that the human face is the mirror of the soul, simultaneously the most intimate and most external part of the subject, the
screen on which psychological innerness fuses with the restraints imposed by public life. The face is at once the site of revelation
and simulation, of indiscretion and concealment, of spontaneity and deceit, of everything that shapes identity. Before the camera
we are always others, as BARTHES used to say. And so maybe these faces are also the utmost, unadorned truth. Whatever the
case, Sandra’s photographs question deeply and allow each viewer to follow his or her own path.

JORGE LATORRE.

2010-01-01T00:25:00.000-08:00

MOVEMENTS BETWEEN SOLIDS AND GHOSTS - COMING OF AGE.

A proposed approach to Sandra Montero’s oeuvre and to the confinement that the series

PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE represents in it.

Over the last three years, the artist SANDRA MONTERO has devoted her time to linking up the personal concerns that she

has with the world around her through her body and performance. Captured in photographs that represent herself, but which

are not self-portraits, her exercises always endorse the space in which they unfold, seeking through the bodily a core of

convergence between the physical characteristics of the specific surroundings and the possibilities of habitability and

modulation that their very structure offers or enhances.

The “passing exercises” that Montero immortalises also offer her the chance to propose, from her own personal experience,

a public place arising from contamination between the disciplines in which she is trained: architecture and photography. But it

is precisely the private nature that action impresses on her images that lends the intimist tone –at times playful, at times

peppered with irony and at others devastating- which the author pursues and conquers in order to present us with her work.

In it, references to a now-established tradition in photographic and performance art which is associated with the subjectivised

treatment of the spatial through action, with the symbolic and symbiotic relationship of the individual with the environment or

the very identity marks of the feminine can be distinguished, as can experimental exercises in photographic technique related

with light through the registering of movement with long shutter times, overexposure or double exposure. It is from these

conceptual, technical and historical coordinates that Sandra unfolds her binnacle of movement on a voyage motivated by the

particular appeal of each space, which culminates in the narrative erected through the photographic series that reflect it.

Sudden fiction marked by the ephemeral of transit frozen in the instant, in the purely photographic sense, her series propose

a visual spell between space and time in which broken, cyclical and linear sequentiality alternate, endowing each ensemble with

a scenic quality that activates a self-absorbed visual regime in which any place that we might find round the corner could seem

a distant bend or any distant location might feel nearby.

This subjective anchoring comes not only from Montero's direct action on the areas with which she interacts and which she

“presents” us in her photographs, but also because said action responds to a clear intentionality regarding the place chosen:

that it should be geographically isolated, socially desolate or simply imperceptible. This inclination towards the invisible, the

forgotten and the fragile is also an essential part of the optical formulation with which she addresses her own register, which is

based on a permanent pattern which is modulated signically and functionally within each experience.

Be it because her back is turned or because her omnipresent locks conceal it, the anonymity of the face is the visual constant

with which SANDRA MONTERO appears before the camera, simulating a ghostly archetype, making her body in the space

a space in itself, a dwelling with a clear feminine stamp which could be occupied by any woman or by all women at once. This

manoeuvre, the reason why we speak of self-representation and not self-portrait, is the model of agreement that governs her

bond with the location, as though her being in the phantasmal places that she chooses could only be deemed legitimate and

mutually productive if carried out as a ghostly visitation.

Two models of visual habitability emerge in this withdrawal and deployment with and within the space: when her photographic

double presents itself as an individual at the location or blends in at its boundaries, it is formalised as an auratic presence in

which the sense of the corporeal obeys more the semiotic faculty of its evocative power than the features of its actual physicality.

When, however, this double presents itself as an inherent part of the space, the anatomy takes on evident solidity, destined to

mesh in as a variable structure, capable of destabilising and regulating the constituent order of the atmosphere that it (re)creates

with its movements, twists or changes of position.

The body as source and epicentre, in movements of coordinates like a scanner with immediate response, it seeks reactive

complicity from its scenario, capable of dissolving it, underscoring it or re-proposing it by inhabiting it and moving through it.

These practices of physical and signical convergence sometimes become compositions of textures, sub-planes and dynamics

of a pictorial nature, on other occasions they become trompes l'oeil, visual tricks which dislocate the architecture portrayed from

an optical perspective.

Providing a stable conjunction between cartography and narrativity, the consequence of the determinism of action that sets and

redesigns its strategies in the field, Montero’s performance exercises mark and build, above all, “momentums”, in both the

mechanical sense of impulse or linear movement and in the philosophical sense of kairos as experience of the opportune moment.

These, solved through an image both aseptic and overwhelming, are the sensitive vanishing points that Sandra invites us to

contemplate and through which she urges us to wander, to accompany her on her personal journey, at times disturbed, at times

euphoric, austere or seductive.

Her initial work is marked by a need to comment on the very fact of femininity in isolation. Her relationship with space would not

seem to be linked to the idea of the structural and architectural so much as the symbolic complement for the retransmission

of a certain sensibility. Series like Fémina, Melodía del movimiento, Tierra prometida or Sobre una mujer, all from 2009, clearly

display this, the first through a textured, chiaroscuro standpoint which plays at simulating vintage photography and the rest

through a diffuse, exacerbated luminosity, not free of references to the visual standards of identity-based photographic art and

certain natural aesthetics from contemporary fashion reports, circuits which have become so contaminated over recent years.

Such luminosity is maintained as a strategy in her later work Remember me, Limbo, Cuerpo de niebla and Gatonegro, all from

2010, or in her more recent Elogio de la locura and Dancing Queen, from 2011. These series, however, already involve the

transmutation with the environment towards which her projects were to tend and which would seem to be based on the basic

sequences of Still life and Catarsis, from 2010. It is in these two series that her body appears clearly for the first time, now

playing at harmonious integration with the scene through visual solidity. A standard register that she has continued to use and

which has adopted, depending on the project, different forms of relationship with the location: totally divorced from it in Desarraigo

y soledad (2010), playing with appearance/disappearance and attempting to remain limited to the context in SPACE AND BODY

(2010), Space/light/body and VOID VESSELS, from 2011, and entering the visual reconfiguration of spatiality head on in her

latest work M/M2 (2011).

Two series deserve special mention. The first is De-composed (2011), in which the artist appears in a neutral scene consisting

of a white wall and grey floor, working compositions, structures and volumes with close-ups of her body which remind one of

basic routines of expression, in a kind of private training publication which highlights the idea of the material mouldability of our

anatomy through gesture.

In absolute contrast, the second series and the subject we are addressing is PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE (2010), the only

project to date in which Sandra is accompanied by other people in her proposed spatial approximation. This peculiarity,

together with the fact that the location they are in is an old people’s home and its residents –elderly people with Alzheimer’s –

are the guests makes this work a special landmark in her career.

Using practically all the strategies that she uses in her processes, with PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE Montero achieves what

is probably her most troubled account of the body and spatiality. In limbo between life and death in an organic sense, her fellow

subjects represent a space in themselves, that of old age, which lurks confined to homes that centrifuge their residents in oblivion,

assigning them the social location of death.

There, Sandra’s ghost, active and melancholic, blends in terms of sense more than ever with the spectrality she pursues, acting

as a contrast to the impassive, absorbed appearance of the elderly figures and as a symbol of a twofold announcement, that of

death and that of reflection of youth, both ghostly spaces from that point in which life, apparently, no longer contemplates its

past or its death announced.

The dramatic, vulnerable, corporeal nature of the characters is accentuated by the emptiness of the absolutely black plane, the

sequences on the wall with splashes of black paint or the moments in which the artist takes up a position strategically alone: with

her back turned in the depths of a waiting room, thrown into a corner on the floor or hanging from the handholds of what looks

like a physical rehabilitation area.

In this questioning movement with her scene companions, Montero achieves a tacit two-way pact: she pays tribute to their persons,

praise which is crystallised in the epic tone of her pictures, whilst she also proposes empathetic involvement, manifest in the

subtlety and air of freshness with which she addresses her interaction. In the state of transition between these emotions in which the

artist has achieved a greater flow of vertexes in her duality, in her capacity to redefine the ritual idea that underlies all expression of

identity, acknowledging the temporality that structures her processes in the finitude of the line of vital time.

It is probably then that PRESENCE OF AN ABSENCE becomes Sandra Montero’s “coming of age”, the momentum in which

awareness of the exercise transcends its implementation. And although the rest is yet to come, her mutant repetition of the

body-space-spectator gesture, her volubility when it comes to sidestepping the commonplace through personal romantic twists,

her game of hide-and-seek, her desire for weightlessness and her wish to make the physical elusive will not fail to find cubby-holes

to infiltrate in order to produce new visions, making each path explored yet another remnant in the logic of this open cartographic

archive governed by symbolism and emotion.

ALEX BRAHIM.