“Waniku. Donde retumba el agua“

(Waniku. When the water rumbles)

Photography Exhibition

Exhibition / 6th November 2014 - 10 January 2015

  “There was a young girl, Warao, whom they called “Good arm” who had a bow and arrow. When she shot a white bird she never missed (…) but one time she did miss, and the arrow brushed past the bird’s feathers and began to fall. So she went to the arrow, the archer, and reached the place it fell. “Where did my arrow go?” She asked herself.  She looked everywhere but could not find it. Suddenly she noticed a small hole, and began to dig. Digging, she crossed the sky floor. As she turned it, she looked at the Earth. *

* “The Goalkeeper ‘Good Arm;’ Founding myth Warao collected by Johannes Wilber (1964).

MONDO GALERIA presents “Waniku. Donde retumba el agua,” the new work of Andrea Santolava (Madrid, 1982) where she explores femininity through the mythological Warao culture set in the Orinoco Delta jungle, to the east of what is now Venezuela, in the state of Delta Amacuro.
 
The Warao woman is the pillar of an endangered culture, and Andrea Santolaya’s photographs pay homage to her in an elegant, respectful and dreamlike way, inviting us to enter a world in which time and distance give way to abstraction. Santolava approaches femininity as a theme familiar from previous work, where she looked at a variety of women including boxers of New York (A Round, 2010) and the ballet dancers of the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg (Prelude, 2012).

Alioth (Ursae Majoris)
Maleni Medina.
Gelatinoclorobromuro de plata
sobre papel baritado. Virado al selenio.
102 x 66 cm.

© Andrea Santolaya

Beyond the evocative poetry of the installation, accompanied by the piece “Waniku” made exclusively by the musician and audio-visual creator Jorge Bandolato, this exhibition consists of 29 exquisite photographic images. They are produced in silver gelatinoclobromide on barred paper facing the selenium in the laboratory of Ruben Morales and under direct supervision and collaboration of Andrea Santolaya.

Waniku. Donde Retumba el Agua

In the delta of the Orinoco River, life has gathered for thousands of years due to the land link to the island of Trinidad. Waniku is the word with which the Warao, its original settlers, call the star that regulates the tides that govern their lives: the moon.

El manglar
Gelatinoclorobromuro de plata
sobre papel baritado.
Doble virado: tiourea/ selenio.
50 x 60 cm.

© Andrea Santolaya

Since the sixteenth century the marshes of the Delta have been subjected to innumerable expeditions by conquerors and adventurers in search of the El Dorado gold, as well as religious missions resolved to carry the gospel to the remotest confines of the Spanish empire. The impact of this cultural invasion can still be seen, such as the traditional Warao suit that was devised by capuchin monks to combat nudity.

Waniku focuses on the Warao woman, the nucleus of the Venezuelan families that have been subject to such radical acculturation. After two years of research and several expeditions, I need your support to continue this project. Its purpose is to show the Warao woman as a pillar of an ethnic group that has suffered a severe loss of cultural identity.

Olimpia.
Comunidad de La Mora
Gelatinoclorobromuro de plata
sobre papel baritado.
Doble virado: tiourea/ selenio.
30 x 40 cm.

© Andrea Santolaya

Following in the footsteps of the ancient missionaries and explorers of the last century, Waniku considers the close link between the mysterious nature of the delta and the Warao women’s’ figure. It is a journey through time in search of a lost paradise.

Andrea Santolaya

Andrea Santolaya (n. Madrid, 1982)
Graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts from The School of visual Arts in New York. The director of her thesis was Larry Fink. Before going to New York she completed an MFA in “Art and Creation” at the School of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid.

She has been working as a freelance photographer since 2006. In recent years she has documented different projects in Europe and the United States. Her work has been published by different media around the world:  El País, El Mundo, Yo Dona, IVAM Museum, New York Visual Arts School and Columbia University.

She has exhibited in galleries such as Freites de Caracas and Marlborough in Madrid. At the Palau de la Música de Valencia, “Cartes de Visite,” there is a two-person exhibition featuring her work with the Mikhailovsky Ballet in St.Petersburg and in the New York Botanical Gardens, photographing the work of Manolo Valdés, work for which she received the distinction of Best Art Publication of the year in 2013 by the Ministry of Culture and Sport Spain.