PORTFOLIOMaría del Rosario Montero Prieto

There is an urgent need to explore the visual representations of identity in media. We need to nurture this exploration with other sources, with different ways of seeing things. The essential questions of identity are the essential question of brands too and is nowadays more relevant than ever before.

My proposal to Platform is connect spaces between photography, representation and identity creating a reflection with other Platform participants in the new ways to present and represent, specifically linking the following topics: 1.- The public (shown image) and the private (photographed object), researching ways to boost this contrast. 2.- Medium and content, experimenting new ways to visualize the photographic images in meaningful media, in relationship with the issues each work deals with. 3.- Patterns and craftsmanship, to link production strategies of my work in relationship with its manufacture.

My experience today has been migrating between these worlds; from the hand craft to photography (see images “Fa-mily Portraits”), to multimedia language (visteme.cl). Currently, I am founder and editor of the Contrahilo project that connects image, young independant fashion and art.

Throughout my career I have developed these connections, researching how photography can link to different aspect of the every day life; My interests lie in these intersections and intentions that occur between the crafts and technology and also between abstract thought and action.

WORK 2001-2009

“Módulos Personales”Laser Print 50 x 50 cm. 2001

Casa Familia Iturriaga Villagra

Impresión digital en papel de transferencia, crea, hilo, Napa y botones 30 x 70 x 40 cm

Casa San Marín Goñi

Exposición “Retratos Familiares” Centro Cultural de España 2004

“Pasta de dientes. Baño de Carla” (Toothpaste. Carla Bath) ESC 1:114 x 9 cm

Pins, cotton, fill poliester and threadExhibition “Modular” Universidad de las Américas.

Santiago, Chile. September 2004.

“Maquillando el piso” (Making up the floor)Start and end of the installation.

Exhibition “Suple” Casa P. De Valdivia. Santiago, Chile. August 2004.

PINCHE AQUÍ

“22 disfraces cotidianos. Versión en vivo” (22 Daily Costumes. Live version)1:1 scale digital projection.

Exhibition “Ninguno.” (None) Master of Visual Arts students.MHM. Santiago Chile . August 2005

HERE

“Retratos de Tránsito”(Transitory Portraits). 38 frames of 16 x16 cm. Transfer paper, fabric and white thread Exhibition “Chile: Norte, Centro y Sur”. MHM. Santiago, Chile.December 2006

“Autorretrato nº31” (Self Portrai nº31)9mm Internit sensitized with silver emulsion and digital projection 120 x 150 cm

Exhibition “Cohortes 02-07” (Cohorts). Selection Alumni Magíster Artes Visuales.Museo de Arte Contemporaneo . April-May 2008

HERE

“Habitaciones Paranoicas”(PARANOID ROOMS SERIES)

The images presented in the “Paranoid Rooms” series portrait locations corresponding to private spaces of the more affluent class in Chile, such as bedrooms, kitchens, classrooms, etc. The series appears as a social document and portrait in absence of the people who inhabit them, presenting a way to represent projection, removed from the traditional appreciation that allows unveiling the denial of the individual of relevant aspects of the identity of the user of the photographed space.

The photography originates through a succession of pre-established acts and happening appearing as a way to run through the series. The idea ruled by imposed norms is what makes up the project, constituting a rigid, frontal, and symmetrical frame. This is how in “Paranoid Rooms” the non-identical fixed frame arises as a stable structure that builds, through the series, the specialness of the scene. With this, it is able to inscribe and understand the story of the photography from the “new objectivity” movement, lead by Hilla and Bern Becher (1960), who look to photograph elements in an identical frame as a catalogue.

One of the formal contemporary references, on the other hand, for the birth of this project is the series “Sleeping by the Mississippi” by the visual artist Alec Soth. In it, the artist photographs rooms, characters, and objects that cohabit the shores of the Mississippi river, erasing from some of the them the characters allowing that the objects be the ones who tell us about their life. In “Paranoid Rooms”, as in some photographs of Soth’s work, the identity of the proprietor of the photographed space is evident through the assemblage of the objects that use the space or their remaining vestige. The construction of the space is done, then, through the objects that dress it, objects that tense by relating through the images belonging to the series. Another referent is the work of Lyhnne Cohen in relation to the construction of the space and emptiness shown in his images. In Cohen’s photo-graphs, the depicted shows us spaces that cannot be located geographically, places of transit or “no places” that make evident the total absence of man. In “Paranoid Rooms”, unlike Cohen-s work, the represented spaces denounce their presence, since most of them are transit spaces. Finally, another reference in the construction of the speech of the work if the photography of Richard Hamilton through his first photographs of the 70’s, when the principal theme were living rooms of private houses. The reiteration of the photographed object evidence the comparison of the ones who live in them, but the distance of the formal construction of the place, treatment of color, and methodology distance Hamilton’s work from this series.

Another aspect in the final act of the presented work and seen by the viewer is generated by the tensions produced between the formal and conceptual relations of what appears as public (exposed image) and the private (rooms depicted).

The name of this series is born during its development and as an answer to the excessive zealousness, the owners of the spaces showed in re-lation to the photographs taken. This is how through the visit to each of the “paranoid rooms” and the realization of this group of pre-established actions this series is born and with it, by photographing each of these different spaces, comes the absence of the owner of the space. Thus, and through the reference of each of these specific subjects, it is the mundane who shows us and at the same time, the millions of personalities that exist in it.

CURRENT WORK (2010)“Ciudad Ideal”

“Winter Camp”

SOME PUBLICATIONS

“Parallel View” Photography book of the Identity in Chile .

Santiago, Chile. November 2006Rosario Montero - Verónica IbañezHERE

Visual Arts Catalogue CCE 2004Exhibition “Retratos Familiares”

Text: Enrique MattheyNovember 2005

Newspaper: El Mercurio. Revista Vivienda y decoración “Fotosíntesis: María del Rosario Montero”.

Text: Juan Domingo MarinelloSantiago, Chile. 29 November 2003

Contemporary Chileanphotography 02/CnCa2010

FotograFía ChilenaContemporánea 02/CnCa2010

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” Contemporary Chilean Photography 02/CNCA”. C.Cultura. Santiago, Chile.

Santiago, Chile. October 2010

HERE

María del Rosario Montero Prieto10A Hanbury Street, E1 6QR

rosario@purodelirio.comwww.rosariomontero.com

Passport Number : 12.072.940-3Date of Birth : 16 February 1978Nationality : Chile

EDUCATION

2004-2005 MFA Visual Arts. Universidad de Chile.1997-2000 BFA Visual Arts. Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile.2009 Diploma Photographic Post- Production Academia Mac-Pc2007 Workshop Lighting for photography. ICP Nueva York.2006 Diploma CrossMedia, level Expert, Academia Mac-Pc.2003 Diploma Digital Photography. Universidad Católica de Chile.

GRANTS/AWARDS

2010 FONDART, Chilean Government arts grant. Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y Las Artes, Gobierno de Chile. (Ciudad Ideal)

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2004 “Retratos Familiares” Centro Cultural de España. Santiago, Chile.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2010 “Territorios independientes”. México City. “¿Dónde el paisaje?” . Valparaíso, Chile. “Photography of the Country, Chile Image, Expo Shanghai, China. “Identidades forzadas”. Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho. Santiago, Chile. “Taller Dittborn.” Galería D21. Santiago, Chile.

2009 ”Cohortes” MAC. Parque Forestal .Santiago, Chile.

2006 ”Retratos: norte, centro, sur” .MHM. Santiago, Chile

2005 “Ninguno” MHM. Santiago, Chile

2004 “Modular” UDLA, Santiago, Chile “Homenaje grabado Pablo Neruda”. La Sebastiana. Valparaíso “Suple” . Pedro de Valdivia 2454. Santiago, Chile “Tres Paisajes”. Galería Artium.Santiago, Chile.

2003 Young Artist. Universidad de Valparaíso. Valparaíso

2002 “V Salón Sur”.Concepción, Santiago, Valparaíso. Chile “Ciertas Mujeres” Municipalidad de Puerto Varas, Chile.

2000 Sélection des étudiants. Galerie de l’Ecole d’art plastique de l’Université de Montreal Salon des étudiants. Cegep de Vieux Montreal Montreal, Canadá.

PUBLICACIONES

2010 ” Contemporary Chilean Photography 02/CNCA”. C.Cultura. Santiago, Chile.2006 “Parallel View” Photography book of the Identity in Chile . Santiago, Chile2005 Artes Visuales CCE 2004 Convocatoria 2204. Centro Cultural de España.2005 Catálogo exposición Suple Editorial Silla Blanca. Santiago, Chile.

OTHERS

2009- 2010 Director and photographer of Contrahilo. (A visual portfolio for the independent fashion designer, focusing on each author’s creative process.)2010 Director and Photographer of Puro Delirio Photography producer.2008- 2009 “VisteMe” Web-art proyect. Visteme.cl2007-2009 SSCC Manquehue High School. Phorography Teacher. Santiago, Chile.2003- 2005 Waldorf de Santiago High School. Phorography Teacher. Santiago, Chile.2003-2005 Universidad de Las Américas. Phorography Teacher. Santiago, Chile.