Patricia Schembari

Project for NYBA: "Kamafuera"
Kamafuera is a photographic work about exposed, emptiness, inmensity unlimited universe

of love and dreams, absences, no time reality. The title of the work is related to the infinite

bed that represents at the same time the skin and surface of the earth, mother earth or

Pachamama who includes us all. As a skin, a path or a net, the earth is just a thin and week

surface with no limits (or invisible ones) that can´t show us for sure when or where does

something begin or end. In a side, there are two words as a couple: Kama, god of love

(and desire sometimes) in Indian tradition in a side and “fuera” which in Spanish means

outside, outdoors, but also the evocation of something that was, in a no specific time, desire

(like a “saudade” in Portuguese). Also, “cama” means bed and ´cama afuera´ is the modality

in which mainly women who clean houses work: they do not overnight in their work place

but leave after finish as an esencial part of the contract. To clean and to purify house or earth

is one of the duties of a chaman, under the protection of the sky, listening to the spirits of

wind, sun, water, animals and other creatures of the nature, just like a writer of haiku,

(“a la intemperie sin fin” which means under the no ending elements, like a walker who

doesn´t know the curls of spirit). Under these topics, the concept of the work tries to travel

through different landscapes, stopovers and roads, all of them different and unique but

certainly huge and filled with immensity, deepness and no certain stop or roof, as if we were

born all together as stones in the desert or drops in the ocean. The proposal is to transform

some stones or drops in very complex objects like sheets or pillows that allow someone to

rest, to cover, to remember how the skin of a stone becomes sensitive without shoes or gloves.

The whole work has been developed in natural places, over the sides of different routes in

Patagonia, with digital technology and direct shots. I started whit it in the gregorian year

of 2009 and finished it in enchanting wave of the monkey (“onda encantada del mono”),

full moon the first of dragon year.

New York Contemporary Art Biennial