Cristina Lucas

 

In the photo-dramatizations she has titled The Old Order (2004), Cristina Lucas comically represents several of the conservative and liberal political stereotypes represented by the age-old phrase “the two Spains.” During the dark decades of the Franco dictatorship, certain elements of society consistently maligned the Other as the enemy: the neighbor who thought differently, the mother of the investigative journalist, the wife of the human rights lawyer, the anarchist about to blow up her own living room. Significantly recontextualized by the current pandemic, Lucas’ photos speak to the current prohibitions established by our respective quarantines while reminding us of the ideas of the late philosopher Zygmunt Bauman: during our era of liquid modernity “security without freedom is slavery, while freedom without security means chaos.”

— CVF, USFCAM

 

Cristina Lucas, La Anarquista (The Anarchist), from the series The Old Order, 2004. Color photograph. 39-3/8 x 55-1/8 in. (110 x 140 cm). Courtesy of the artist.

 

Cristina Lucas, La Autárquica (The Autarchist), from the series The Old Order, 2004. Color photograph. 39-3/8 x 55-1/8 in. (110 x 140 cm). Courtesy of the artist.

 
Cristina Lucas in Kiasma 2015.

Cristina Lucas in Kiasma 2015.

About Cristina Lucas

(Jaén, Spain, 1973)

She lives and works in Madrid.

Cristina Lucas is a multidisciplinary artist, working with photography, video, drawings, sculpture and installations. Her work is often straightforwardly critical, but also serious, playful and humorous. Lucas reminds us that art comes on like a seduction that, in time, allows us to become conscious of what is taking place in society. Long interested in exposing how power works, the artist analyzes political and economic structures, dissecting them to reveal the contradictions between official history, reality and collective memory. She also reimagines information flow, restructuring its advances and retreats into cartographies, installations and images that propose possible readings that are always open ended. Lucas’ work has appeared in solo exhibitions at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Móstoles, Spain); Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (Mexico City, Mexico); OK Centrum (Linz, Austria); MUDAM (Luxembourg City, Luxembourg); Kuntshall 3.14 (Bergen, Norway); as well as in biennials such as Manifesta 12, Palermo (Italy); the 12th Shanghai Biennial (China); the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial (Russia) and Diversity United at the New Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia).

Gallery website: albarran-bourdais.com