The Ambassadors (Jan 2005) - FEATURES

In the fall of 2004, during a regular stroll through the campus of the University of Kentucky, I came across a gallery exhibit with a strikingly refined touch of aesthetic expression. Titled “Con Agua de Cielo” (“With Water from Heaven” ), the Chilean photographic exhibit was on display at the Rasdall gallery.

I was struck by a beautiful rendition of the famous Van Gogh self-portrait by the young artist Alvaro, who also posed in the image (see image right). The creative process involved photographing the original paintings, recreating the originals by posing as models and taking black and white photographs, interpreting the paintings through poetry, and finally manipulating a digital versions of the originals to create new computer-generated “paintings” which express depth through rich colors.

Each of the artists see themselves in relation to the images. Rather than imitation, these images are more about an encounter with art. It is a refined process filled with much care in hope that the complete project extends beyond the mere photographs. The young artists worked in different disciplines to recreate, comment on, and ultimately transform landmark painting in Western art history into rendered pieces that exhibit and reflect the personas of the characters they embody. The models cover the work of a large number of artists including Boticelli, Leonardo Da Vinci, Velasquez, Vermeer, Goya, Van Gogh, Manet, Modigliani, Klimt, Picasso, and Andy Warhol.

Compiled into a book, the students of the Aquelarre Center, which welcomes and serves young people with mental handicaps personify their artistic works under the supervision of the center's chairman Jorge Aceituno, a professor and the chair of photography at the University of Chile. Aceituno explains that all decisions regarding the art pieces are made by the artists themselves. "They chose paintings and decided to represent them. Then they also serve as actors in the paintings" explained Aceituno.

The exhibit which has been recognized in a variety of places came to the University of Kentucky as part of a collaborative project that dates back to 1992. Prof. Lance Brunner, the director of graduate studies in UK's School of Music explains that the exhibit features far more than the photographs. The project comprises also some paintings and poetry provided by the artists.

In "With Water from Heaven", the artists from Aquelarre truly inaugurate their own idea of a sensible space. What is on the canvas, film, or paper are products of their fingers and letters. Jorge Aceituno explained and stressed the importance of an "elbow-to-elbow" method. "There was no paternalism," he said. Instead the young artists were both the protagonists and the art itself.

Aceituno has just recently been granted a prestigious Guggenheim scholarship of $30,000 for the development of a project with blind schizophrenics.

La dama del armino	Andrea posing
Self-portrait of Van Gogh	The artist posing in this self-portrait is Tatán.
Vermeer	Cecilia posing in the rendition of
Boticelli	Margarita

Adel Iskandar is currently a PhD candidate in communications at the University of Kentucky (USA) and is on the editorial board of The Ambassadors Magazine. He is co-author of the best-selling book, "Al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East" (2002).