'Días Eternos' Gallery Opening & Artist Talk with Ana María Arévalo Gosen

372 Miracle Mile,Coral Gables FL 33134

12 August, 2022

Description

Join us on Friday, August 12th at 7:30 PM EST for an in-person gallery opening & artist talk with photographer and Leica Oskar Barnack Award-winner Ana María Arévalo Gosen at our showroom in Coral Gables. Ana María will be present and give an artist talk and Q&A about her award-winning project "Días Eternos." Says Ana María of her work: "In Venezuela, the justice system does not work on behalf of the prisoners, especially the women. They have to wait sometimes years to be judged and move on to trial. Thus, detention centers are acting as a repository for criminals in Venezuela. A detention center should be a place where a detained person waits for a maximum of 45 days for their trial. The procedural delay in the country makes it an unbearable, eternal wait. Many men and women have died inside these centers, which concentrates diseases like tuberculosis or AIDS. Women live under cramped and deplorable conditions. Water, food and medical attention are not administrated by the authorities. Their food is brought by their families everyday. Improvised and overcrowded facilities with little light and no space for privacy sustain all kinds of women with different problems - from drug abuse to psychological problems. Also under-aged and pregnant women live inside those spaces. Their families and children have to pay for visitation to the corrupt guards. Although some women are abandoned once they are detained, they do not starve, other inmates share food with them. Inside these facilities these women form alliances and become friends to endure the conditions brought upon them. How do these women return to society upon their release? After such an experience, these women will not come out being a reformed person.” About Ana María: "I was born in 1988 in Caracas, Venezuela. In 2009, I moved for five years to Toulouse, France, where I studied Political Sciences (at Institut d’Etudes Politiques) and found my passion for photography (ETPA, Ecole de photographie). In 2014, I moved to Hamburg, Germany, and started to work as a visual storyteller. I also worked as a staff photographer for the SZENE Magazine and did freelance work for some outlets. Between 2016 and 2017, I developed my most challenging work: “The Meaning Of Life”. It is the intimate story of my husband’s fight against testicular cancer. Today, we use this project to raise awareness about this disease. Each year, the exhibition of the photography series raises funds for male cancer research. In 2018 and 2019, we organized an exhibition in Madrid and Bilbao simultaneously for the Movember Foundation. In 2020, we partnered up with Ralph Lauren, participated in their Pink Pony campaign for cancer awareness and raised funds with their support for the Asociación Española Contra El Cáncer. My roots called me back to Venezuela in 2017 where I developed “Días eternos”, an in-depth work on the condition of women in pretrial detention and prisons in the country. This work was consecutively awarded the first place of the POY Latam in the category “the strength of women”, then the Lucas Dolega Award and eventually the LUMIX photo Award in 2020. It was also finalist for the IWPA. “Días eternos” was made possible by the support of Women Photograph (2018) and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Travel Grant (2018). My work has been published in international outlets like the New York Times, LFI, 6 Mois Magazine, El País, El Pais Semanal, Wordt Vervold, the Washington Post, DUMMY Magazine… It has been exhibited at the Manifesto Festival in Toulouse (2019), the Helsinki Photo Festival (2020), Photoville in New-York (2020). In April 2018, I was invited to participate in a conference in Defense of Human Rights (FIU, Miami). In partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, I also give classes to high school children. Currently based in Bilbao, Spain, and still spending long periods of time in Venezuela every year, I am a Women Photograph member, an Ayun Fotografas member and have been a National Geographic Explorer since 2020. I am a fighter for women’s rights and my weapon is slow visual storytelling." Parking: Paid street parking available, or, garage parking ($1.25/hr) available behind the store located on Andalusia Ave across from Publix.