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London Metropolitan University   2002/2003

Juan del Gado

Arrows Without Bodies is an environmental sound/video installation incorporating the key issues pertaining to the subject of the so-called 'illegal' immigration, combining practices and techniques from artistic areas ranging from performance, video and sound, and installation. This project has brought together the artists Juan delGado and Zory with a group of artists and international singers from Spain, Iran, Turkey and Morocco with a genuine personal interest in the subject. Our aim was to establish new ways of collaboration by providing the opportunity to exchange ideas and art practices, which would serve to enhance the dialogue amongst the participant artists and would improve the quality and originality of their future work.

To date, the work we have produced investigates that deepest part of self which contends with the trauma of displacement. Zory, who developed a personal style incorporating images of Muslim women and safety pins, deals with her own experience of having to run away from her own country. Her images allude to all those women who could not complete this escape. [s1] This subject appears again in the installation she made for the refugee week in Birmingham about the tragedy of the fifty-eight Chinese immigrants who died of suffocation in a lorry. She progressed into Mask (2002), a video piece that functions purely on a visual and sonic level, in which the artist explores our desire to see what cannot normally be seen, what is normally veiled or hidden from sight. This work was included in the "Artists in Exile" show at the Riverside Studios and Fresh Art Fair 2002 held at the Business Centre, Islington.

Since 1997, Juan delGado has produced a body of work combining video, photography and installation including the photographic series The Wounded Image (1997-2002) in which he explored the concept of traumatic experiences as an attempt to release a swirling vortex of his own fears and anxieties. Set mostly in domestic scenarios and borrowing language from films and photojournalism he created a narrative, a story drawn upon real experiences of violence, child abuse and racism. This work was selected by the John Kobal Photographic Awards and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery. In 2001, he directed and co-produced a digital video installation entitled don't look under the bed. Based on a real experience this work portrayed issues related to intolerance, and social exclusion. He also developed a video performance entitled "Who are you entertaining to?" as part of the Culture Lab programme 2002 and in collaboration with Vivid Media Centre, Birmingham. Here, Juan continues his inquiry about cruelty and trauma while also questioning his role - social/political - as an artist.