Selected Prints of Viky Garcia - from "Mother's milk" series
Viky Garcia Biography
Viky García was born in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 1980. From a young age, she yearned to leave her hometown, and she has lived for periods in the United States, Spain, Italy, and Southeast Asia.
As an artist, the different phases she has gone through influence her most recent works. Garcia started her video, film, and television education at Escuela IDEP in Barcelona in 2000. The following year, she studied photography at the same school.
Her career began in 2003 as a photojournalist for a Galician newspaper, El Correo Gallego. Finding documentary photography to be an insufficient outlet for her creative urges, Garcia returned to Barcelona in 2008 to pursue a post-graduate course in multidisciplinary art therapy and human development at the Instituto de Arteterapia Transdisciplinaria de Barcelona (IATBA).
She also taught workshops as part of social projects in Barcelona and Guatemala City, which were subsidized by La Caixa and UNESCO, respectively. Garcia studied fine-art photography at the Grisart school, participated in an experimental theater troupe at Laboratorio Escuela de Expresión Corporal Dramática, and pursued a post-graduate program with the Teatro de los Sentidos theater company.
Intrigued by Japanese butoh dance, she took classes with Japanese masters like Atsushi Takenouchi.
In 2013, Garcia moved to New York, where she pursued general studies at the International Center of Photography (ICP). The following year she did an internship in the studios of Tony Oursler and Marina Zurkow.
Garcia's photographs are personal, with a tinge of the surreal. They cover a number of different disciplines: performance, installation, and self-portraiture.
Through these media, the artist develops unlikely scenes in which she explores her innermost selves in order to delve into their psychology.
EDUCATION
2013 – 2014: One year Certificate Program in General Photographic Studies. ICP, New York City, USA
2009 – 2010: Postgraduate in “Lenguaje Sensorial y Poética del Juego” (Sensory Language & Poetics of the Game) of the theatre company “Teatro de los sentidos,” directed by Enrique Vargas. Barcelona, Spain
2008 – 2010: Training at Escuela Laboratorio de Expresión Corporal Dramática (Lab School of Dramatic Body Expression) directed by Jessica Walker. Barcelona, Spain
2009 – 2010: One year Fine Art Photography Certificate Program. Gris Art, Barcelona, Spain
2008 – 2010: Masters in Interdisciplinary Art-Therapy and Human Development. ISPA, Barcelona, Spain
2002 – 2003: One year Certificate program in Photography. Gris Art, Barcelona, Spain
2001 – 2002: One year Certificate Program in Photography. IDEP, Barcelona, Spain
2000 – 2001: One year Certificate Program in Video-Cinema-Television. IDEP, Barcelona, Spain
From Viky Garcia's "Mother's Milk" series. Prints are available from Atelier VGI.
VIky Garcia
Artist Statement
My current work follows on a wide-ranging exploration of artistic disciplines, from photography (both as documentary and fine art) to experimental theater and Japanese butoh dance.
Formally and conceptually, I am attracted to surrealism for its ability to start dialogues with the hidden corners inside all of us, allowing us to look inwardly, to grow, and finally to deconstruct our convictions and realities.
What interests me is delving into the psychology of my most intimate, interior selves. My work thus builds a bridge between the conscious and the subconscious, exploring the fusion of obsessions, fears, frustrations, passions, and, ultimately, the emotions that live within me. Photography—with a tinge of the existentialist—emerges as the encapsulation of a number of different disciplines, including performance, installation, and self-portraiture.
In creating my work, I consider it essential to appear as a model in some of my images. This gives me the opportunity to probe the limits and expressions of my own body, allowing it to interact with an imagined, symbolic, and yet everyday environment that bears parallels with my personal and spiritual life. Symbols both archetypal and personal abound in my visual language, coming to me intuitively as visions that I reveal little by little, as if hieroglyphics of my psyche.
As an artist, by exposing and abandoning myself in the construction of my images, I try to convey my belief in the universality of emotions, and that it is this universality that unites us despite our most intense differences. I start with myself and my own feelings in order to move outward toward something broader, in communion with what makes us all human.
Strictly speaking, my aim is not for the viewer to decipher or understand my work. I am happy if it opens up a space in their minds for new images to confront or comfort them. I aspire to make what I feel resonate in other bodies, and for each viewer to formulate their own questions.
What this constant curiosity leads to is that each of my images springs from a question and leads into another one. Questions are more interesting to me than answers, since they retain my curiosity in the everyday, at first glance banal, but which can be broken down to its constituent parts and lead to the discovery of a transcendent meaning, thus making it all the more moving.
This is the engine that drives me to create, while also expanding my sights, transforming my perception, and helping me push against the tedium of the routine.
From Viky Garcia's "Mother's Milk" series. Prints are available from Atelier VGI.
Viky Garcia Exhibitions, Awards and Publications
SOLO EXHIBITION
2016 MOTHER’S MILK, CONTRAST GALLERY, Barcelona, Spain. Two-month solo show at gallery in the center of Barcelona.
2015 MOTHER’S MILK, SUBJECT GALLERY, New York City, USA. Solo show at pop-up gallery Subject.
2004 VIKY GARCÍA, JVG ESPACIO GALERÍA, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
GROUP EXHIBITIONS + FESTIVALS
2020 EXHIBITION OF SPANISH ARTISTS IN QATAR. ART AND CULTURE WITHOUT BORDERS FOUNDATION. Doha, Qatar
2016 DIFFUSION GROUP SHOW, GALERÍA SMITH. Texas, USA
2014 ELECTIVE AFFINITIES, INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY. New York City, USA
2013 REGARDS FESTIVAL. Perpignan, Francia
2012 BAC FESTIVAL, GALERÍA BLOW. Barcelona, Spain
2012 OLOT PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL. Olot, Spain
2012 MAKE MOTHERS VISIBLE, Public Art collaboration with WOMEN’S MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA. Barcelona, Spain
2012 VELADAS+TERRA FESTIVAL. Figueras, Spain
2011 4FOCUS, GALERÍA CONTRAST. Barcelona, Spain
2004 EL CAMINO DE SANTIAGO, EL CORREO GALLEGO. Santiago de Compostela, Spain
AWARDS:
Fine Art Photography Awards: 3rd Prize Winner in Conceptual. Professional category.
PUBLICATIONS:
LEMNISCATE OF DIFFUSION MAGAZINE issue 2016 page 59
Photography Magazine H.O.W.: an art + literary journal, vol #11 Fall/Winter 2015. Front Cover image & pp. 80 – 93.
PRESS
01 June 2015. El faro de Vigo. Sociedad page16. Written by Amaia Mauleón.
25 May 2015. Radio de Galicia. Live On-Air Interview. http://www.crtvg.es/rg/podcast/galicia-por-diante-galicia-por-diante-do-dia-29-05-2015-1189096
19 May 2015. La Opinión de A Coruña. Sociedad, Cultura y Ocio page 55. Written by Amaia Mauleón. http://www.laopinioncoruna.es/sociedad/2015/05/18/surrealismo-simbolismo-pos-maternidad/957609.html
18 May 2015. El faro de Vigo. Sociedad page 25. Written by Amaia Mauleón.
29 April 2015. El correo gallego. Gente. Cover. Written by Margarito Flowers.
PRESS: Internet
L’OEIL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE: https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/viky-garcia-mothers-milk/
THE CREATORS PROJECT, VICE: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnpay9/monochrome-white-photos-mother-daughter-chaos
NYC X DESIGN
WIDEWALLS: http://www.widewalls.ch/viky-garcia-photographs-at-subject-mothers-milk-exhibition-new-york/
THE COFEETOGRAPHER
MUSEE MAGAZINE
QUIEN: http://www.quien.com/circulos_mexico/2015/06/04/gina-moreno-maria-luisa-mendoza-y-juana-domenzain-invitan-a-mothers-milk-de-vicky-garcia
ART REPORT: http://artreport.com/viky-garcias-mothers-milk-explores-mother-daughter-relationships/
Getty images: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/leticia-presutti-attends-viky-garcias-mothers-milk-news-photo/475110410
Plates to Pixels: http://platestopixels.com/blog/exhibitions/viky-garcia/
LA VANGUARDIA NEWSPAPER
ESTÁ CHINGÓN: http://www.estachingon.com/2016/06/mothers-milk-por-viky-garcia.html?m=1
From Viky Garcia's "Mother's Milk" series. Prints are available from Atelier VGI.