Ana Alenso, Venezuelan artist based in Berlin, reflects on the global dependency on oil and on the political, social and economic tensions that black gold generates. Contemporary And América Latina (C&AL) spoke to the artist about her disquieting “Petrocultural Imaginary”.
Ana Alenso, from the series Oil Interventions, 2015-2017. Courtesy of the artist.
Ana Alenso, 1,000,000 %, 2015-2018. Venezuelan bolivars, barrel, counterfeit money detector and other artefacts. Courtesy of the artist.
Ana Alenso, Bermuda Triangle, 2014. Inkjet Print. 100 x 70 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Ana Alenso, Brent Crude Oil-Elf Edition, 2017. Barrel, aluminum ramps, cart, ladder, cement, amplifier and microphone. Variable dimensions. Courtesy of: SixtyEight Art Institute, Denmark. Photo: Christopher Sand-Iversen.
C&AL: In 2018, you presented an installation called 1,000,000% for the Berlin Art Prize. Can you briefly describe it?
Ana Alenso: The installation questions the phenomenon of hyperinflation in Venezuela and relates it to the so-called Curse of Resources or Abundancy Paradox. This is a theory from political economy, which describes how wealth in natural resources is equivalent to the increase in violence and corruption in countries such as Angola, the Congo and Nigeria. In the case of Venezuela, a country with the largest oil reserves in the world and paradoxically a current inflation of 1,000,000% (the same as Germany in 1923, for example), it is absurd to try to understand in concrete terms how we have reached this point and how we think about the future. Thus, art becomes a tool of necessary speculation.
The installation is a collection of sculptures, objects, industrial waste, engines, sounds, lights and photographs connected by hoses and synchronized with each other. While you listen to the cries of a broker in the Chicago stock exchange coming from the inside of an oil barrel, you can see how one of the main elements of the installation is activated next to it, a prototype of the “Money Cyclone”, a cabin of plastic containing about two million Bolivars Fuertes (BsF), worth as little as 20 cents. The rest of the elements of the installation are still active: rotating pieces of asphalt, a “tombola” that lights up, a clicking “ticket check” machine, car parts and LED lamps hanging from the ceiling, photographs on the floor etc.
C&AL: What happened with the money?
AA: Well, that was a surprise element that particularly allowed me to contemplate the idea of destruction in a temporal sense. During the course of the installation, the bills began to disintegrate, due to the exposure to the air and from rubbing against inside of the plastic cabin, some even left the cabin in small pieces. The progressive deterioration of the bills became an ominous allegory of the monetary reconversion to the new Sovereign Bolivar (announced by the regime just one week before the opening of the exhibition) which has five zeros less compared to the BsF and which it is anchored to the new PETRO cryptocurrency, which is in turn backed by the country’s oil reserves. Nothing more and nothing less.
C&AL: How do you use art to approach issues of economics, sociology or politics?
AA: I try to maintain a balance between the knowledge that comes from creating in the workshop. What is intrinsic to the objects and materials that I decide to use and that which feeds on my interpretation of some phenomena of political economy associated with the exploitation of natural resources, such as the so-called Curse of Resources, the Boom And Bust and the Dutch disease. Although this exchange of ideas and experiences emerges from a political and critical motivation, it continues to subsist in the field of arts, resulting in a poetic language that I call “petrocultural imaginary”.
C&AL: In the case of your “petrocultural imaginary”, how do you establish the balance between art and discourse on market dynamics, economic and ecological issues?
AA: During the process, there is an important physical issue, without which many artworks would not exist: The need to achieve a balance as well as the tension between the different elements in the installation. Tension. That mysterious, fragile and temporary concept that unites and upholds the elements. It is an aesthetic element present in works such as Brent Crude Oil-Elf Edition, Water, Oil And Organic Orange Juice and The Bermuda Triangle. Only from there can other relationships and similarities be created between the formal qualities of sculpture and the frailty of ecosystems – the tension present in some geopolitical issues or the ecological risk of using fracking, to give a few examples.
C&AL: Could that, which you offer be a new inverted image of paradise?
AA: They are rather apocalyptic landscapes. I am not sure if “inverted paradise” is the right description because the idea of utopia is still present. In my work, the gathering and exhaustive recycling of materials is an aspect that challenges me and motivates avoid falling into a pessimistic attitude, with respect to the hyper-consumerist and hyper-corrupt world in which we live.
C&AL: What is your interest in the oil barrel as an icon? To me it seems that the barrel in your work functions like a semantic resonance box, whose echo expands all the other ideas.
AA: Exactly. The barrel is undoubtedly an element, which, on a sculptural level, has a strong presence. It is a versatile, multifunctional element and a symbol of the postindustrial era, which is why I consider it a symbol of power. It intrigues me because it allows me to contextualize both local and more specific topics, without giving up the global context. In the case of Water and Oil And Organic Orange Juice, what at first appears to be a barrel of oil is suddenly discovered as a barrel of organic orange juice. In this apparent contradiction lies the logic of modern industrialization processes, which does not distinguish between oil and oranges and leads us to an abstract vision of nature.
Ana Alenso is a Venezuelan artist based in Berlin, Germany. She holds an MA from the University of the Arts in Berlin (UdK) as well as an MA in art and design from the Bauhaus-University in Weimar. Graduated from the National Experimental University of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at Sixty Eighth Art Institute (Denmark), Porreres Museum (Spain), Neues Museum Weimar (Germany), Alejandro Otero Museum, Espacio Monitor (Venezuela) and many other places. She received an honorable mention at the Berlin Art Prize 2018.
The interview was conducted by curator, critic and editor Aristides Santana. Santana has been a curator at the TEA Tenerife Museum, member of the Dept. of Publications of the CAAM museum, in Spain, curator of MIA Photo Fair Milano, Italy, and member co-founder of the space project Mäss Gallery and has directed the gallery Nova Invaliden Galerie in Berlin, Germany.
Translation from Spanish by Zarifa Mohamad Petersen.
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