Johan Orellana
︎︎︎ JUMP BACK TO MAY BRINGS FLOWERS PROJECT STATEMENT
Nineteen Sixty-Two (Mil novecientos sesenta y dos) is a series of six collages that attempt to bring the artist’s family archive photograph into a relevant and contemporary context. The image shows Orellana’s grandfather, standing second to the left, accompanied by friends having refreshments after a long working day at a local banana plantation. This base image, taken in 1972, is a reminder of the political, economic, and social turmoil that Ecuador experienced during that period. Former president Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra had been elected to office for the fifth time and became overthrown in that year; oil production kickstarted and made the nation a competive oil trader; the banana industry saw a slow decline in demand and revenue, and US officials kept infiltrating Ecuadorian cities and institutions with the purpose to maintain communist ideologies at bay.
In the collages, each photograph incrementally becomes covered by banana stickers directly sourced from Orellana’s grandfather's current banana farm. The stickers, locally known as calypsos, function as a metaphor for global corporate encroachment and as proof of the banana industry’s irreparable neoliberalist effect in the nation. The banana box cutouts, in which the altered archive images lay, were sourced and processed by the artist, and they further emphasize the idea of being branded and shipped to Western consumers.
Nineteen Sixty Two Series
(Mil novecientos sesenta y dos),
First Iterations, 2023
Family archive scan printed on archival inkjet paper, cut-and-pasted on sourced banana
boxes cardboard
16 by 12 in.
40.64 by 30.48 cm.
(b. 1998) is an Ecuadorian-born, Spaniard and American-raised lens-based artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His bodies of work, a mix of photographic approaches, encapsulate moments of high experiential affinity where individuals, objects, and landscapes become interrelated representations of the artist’s visual brain map. He finds interest in visual dichotomies, parallels, intersections, and tangents that, mostly, result in observations about the domestic and public spaces; national historical and family archives; and documentation of a geographical area or community. Orellana received two B.A. degrees, Photography and Spanish Studies, from Bard College. His work has also been featured in Phe Studios, Brooklyn, and the Cristian Anthony Vallejo Memorial Gallery, Las Cruces, and he is a recent Magnum Foundation Fellowship recipient.