Antonia Bañados | Chile
A young artist travels to an art school in Scotland, where she starts the creation of an ambitious work: a futuristic installation inside an aquarium inhabited by an axolotl, a small Mexican amphibian who she calls Charlie.
Gradually Charlie takes an unexpected role for her. She feels that he is watching and judging her while floating in this world of luminous and transparent pieces. This becomes a frustrating obsession reinforced by comments from her peers and teachers, who question the ethics of having a living being as part of an art installation.
Her concern manifests in the shape of recurring nightmares where she kills Charlie by accident. The stronger this emotional bond becomes, the closer the date of return to her home country, and therefore, the separation from Charlie and the time of undoing everything that she worked so hard to build.
Thus, she questions with what delusions of superiority she came to feel capable of creating a universe and believing that she could dispose of the life of another being for the creation of her own work, exposing him faraway from his land, completely alone.
Even though at the end she achieves her initial goal, her view of the art world and her life choices both get transformed.
This autobiographical work shows from an insider point of view the creative process of making an artwork, the dynamics between art students, their fears and ambitions, and the contradictions of the art world. Visually there is a high emphasis in the architecture, the city and the spaces in which the story takes place.
Education:
Universidad Católica de Chile & Edinburgh College of Art
BA in visual arts & Master in Contemporary Art
Graduation: 2016