Photo © Bea Zamora C
Creative - NOMINEE: Bea Zamora C
The Circle of my Flesh
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Shortly before my tenth birthday, I was surprised by my first menstruation. I turned to my mother who, with sudden delight --which I found inexplicable-- took me to our home library to show me the anatomical female body contained in a volume of the Medical Encyclopedia. She told me that I had become a woman and warned me of the risk I ran of getting pregnant; before I could ask a single question, my mother closed the book.
The Circle of My Flesh emerges from a thirty-year process during which I lived in a body-for-others (according to feminist theories, a term which describes the cultural expropriation of women's bodies as a form of existing in function of others) and from where I gave birth to a series of writings in the form of a diary. From this intimate world, I deconstructed the binary, linear legacy to create a circular one. Subconsciously, these writings function like the womb where the images making up the body of this work are conceived. Through them I address the journey of a corporality seeking its individuality, no longer as a motherwife but rather as an agent demanding time and space for itself, and questioning the unrealistic ideal of the exclusive-loving-sacrificing-mother. Through this path and in this time, I shaped, destroyed and rebuilt myself numerous times in an attempt to become a self-for-itself.
My mother’s grand design was completed ten years later when I became pregnant. It wasn’t until after two decades that I conquered a room of my own, as British writer Virginia Woolf proposed in her essay, to grow, create and reinvent myself. In The Circle of My Flesh all the moments and all the emotions, in my attempts to protect the beings that I engendered with my body, blend together. It is the same body that limits me, like retaining walls, through which I am also liberated: With it, I not only opened all the books I needed to read, but also rewrite them, from the circle of my flesh.
About author:
Bea Zamora C (El Salvador, 1967) lives and works in Guatemala City as an artist focused on photography and texts that she produces to dig into the subconscious. She has degrees in Literature and Language, Education and in Gender Studies. After graduating in 2017 from La Fototeca (Guatemala) with a degree in Photography, she decided to explore personal stories which involve family background and gender equality.
Her work have been shown in different art galleries and auctions in Guatemala such as Espacio Satélite, Galería Sol del Río, Galería El Attico and Juannio; and in Mexico where her project “Alma” was selected on the First Contest of Contemporary Photography of Latin America Luz del Norte. Her work are held in private collections such as Patricia Conde Gallery, Televisa, Luz del Norte and La Fototeca.
During the past two years, Zamora’s projects have been acknowledged internationally by awards nominations at Patricia Conde Gallery Award, Festival Paraty Em Foco, Latin America Fotografia 7, Prix de la Photography, Monovisions Photography Awards and Tokyo International Foto Awards.
The Circle of My Flesh emerges from a thirty-year process during which I lived in a body-for-others (according to feminist theories, a term which describes the cultural expropriation of women's bodies as a form of existing in function of others) and from where I gave birth to a series of writings in the form of a diary. From this intimate world, I deconstructed the binary, linear legacy to create a circular one. Subconsciously, these writings function like the womb where the images making up the body of this work are conceived. Through them I address the journey of a corporality seeking its individuality, no longer as a motherwife but rather as an agent demanding time and space for itself, and questioning the unrealistic ideal of the exclusive-loving-sacrificing-mother. Through this path and in this time, I shaped, destroyed and rebuilt myself numerous times in an attempt to become a self-for-itself.
My mother’s grand design was completed ten years later when I became pregnant. It wasn’t until after two decades that I conquered a room of my own, as British writer Virginia Woolf proposed in her essay, to grow, create and reinvent myself. In The Circle of My Flesh all the moments and all the emotions, in my attempts to protect the beings that I engendered with my body, blend together. It is the same body that limits me, like retaining walls, through which I am also liberated: With it, I not only opened all the books I needed to read, but also rewrite them, from the circle of my flesh.
About author:
Bea Zamora C (El Salvador, 1967) lives and works in Guatemala City as an artist focused on photography and texts that she produces to dig into the subconscious. She has degrees in Literature and Language, Education and in Gender Studies. After graduating in 2017 from La Fototeca (Guatemala) with a degree in Photography, she decided to explore personal stories which involve family background and gender equality.
Her work have been shown in different art galleries and auctions in Guatemala such as Espacio Satélite, Galería Sol del Río, Galería El Attico and Juannio; and in Mexico where her project “Alma” was selected on the First Contest of Contemporary Photography of Latin America Luz del Norte. Her work are held in private collections such as Patricia Conde Gallery, Televisa, Luz del Norte and La Fototeca.
During the past two years, Zamora’s projects have been acknowledged internationally by awards nominations at Patricia Conde Gallery Award, Festival Paraty Em Foco, Latin America Fotografia 7, Prix de la Photography, Monovisions Photography Awards and Tokyo International Foto Awards.