New Topographies: 25.7617° N, 80.1918 W° is a multi-site installation by Gabriela Gamboa that brings together archives, photography, and found material to explore how particular landscapes relate to and influence memory. A grouping of digital prints mounted on large-scale aluminum panels depicts el Cerro Bolívar, a mountainous mining zone in the State of Bolívar, Venezuela, noted for having one of the highest concentrations of iron ore in the world. Gamboa’s father was a metallurgical engineer specializing in the extraction and transformation of metals and her early years were spent in close proximity to the mine.
Drawing from memories of her time living near el Cerro B, Gamboa reconstructs a “personal mythology,” an exercise in remembering a place that no longer exists as it once did. She does so by expanding upon the notion of geography, not only as it pertains to the physicality of a landscape (i.e. its topography), but also how it is affected by human intervention.
For this installation, Gamboa constructs her own “map” by imposing the natural features of a landscape she intimately knows on another one that although recognizable, continues to feel unfamiliar and foreign. The mine, an expansive mountainous area that stands in stark contrast to the relative flatness of South Florida, is captured from multiple angles, creating a heightened sense of disorientation. When the resulting works are viewed together, a continuous, yet disjointed, horizon emerges. For Gamboa, this translates to an unending search for a sense of belonging and place exacerbated by the challenges of exile.
Gabriela Gamboa, Roca 38, 2021. Archival digital print on scanned drawing. Courtesy of the artist.
Through this body of work, Gamboa reveals the tension between what is considered natural and man-made. Her images are devoid of human figures, but they reference places (mines, factories, etc.) clearly intervened upon and impacted by human presence. The body, while removed from the photographic plane, exists in relation to the larger installation, as the viewer is invited to interact with the work in a direct and tactile way.
“All my work stems from a performative process,” notes Gamboa. “This particular work, while there is a total absence of the body, suggests the presence and passage of people. Being in lockdown [during the pandemic] in an unfamiliar place shifted my relationship to space, nature, and my own body. I needed to ground myself in a familiar place—el Cerro B—even if it was only through photographs.”
The prints in Gamboa’s installation are part of a larger photographic series created in response to and inspired by “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” a seminal exhibition of contemporary landscape photography at the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, in 1975. “New Topographics” presented an alternative photographic approach that shied away from romanticized imagery and prioritized the everyday built environment.
In New Topographies: 25.7617° N, 80.1918 W ° Gamboa informally links her experience living near el Cerro Bolívar to the social, political, and economic implications of iron ore extraction in Venezuela and to the impacts of industrialization on migration, displacement, resource allocation and distribution, and land use in the region.
The installation continues at The Deering Estate from Friday, November 11, 2022 – Sunday, February 12, 2023.
Courtesy of Bakehouse Art Complex. Filmed by Preguntas Studio, 2023.
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Read an essay on New Topographies: 25.7617° N, 80.1918 W ° by Assistant Director of Programs and Community Engagement, Laura Novoa, on our blog here.
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This exhibition is funded by The Ellies, Miami’s visual arts awards, presented by Oolite Arts. This presentation is also funded, in part, by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and The Florida Division of Arts and Culture.
About the artist
Gabriela Gamboa (b. 1956, Pittsburgh, PA) received her BFA in Art and Design from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Visual Art from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has exhibited artwork both regionally and internationally at renowned institutions including Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Venezuela; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima, Peru; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago, Chile; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Zulia, Venezuela. In 2021, she was awarded an Ellies Creator Award by Oolite Arts, Miami’s visual arts awards. Gamboa has been an artist-in-residence at Bakehouse Art Complex since 2018.