A special program by Corinne Mazzoli and Alma Elena Cardoso
The program On Tutorials, Stereotypes and Body Visions took shape during a workshop that the artist Corinne Mazzoli conducted at the Universidad Iberoamericana en Puebla as part of her research supported by the Italian Council 2021. The analysis between the hybrid exploration of theory and workshop practice questions the homologating and imitative nature of the Tutorial, making it a tool to unconventionally represent the sense of emancipation and identity.
Since the 1990s, with the worldwide diffusion of the internet, online tutorials have established themselves as a direct learning method that teaches through emulation. Their success began first on YouTube, and then spread through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other sites. The tutorials are a direct evolution of the “instructions for use” format and they have been able to develop their own distinctive aesthetics, winking at commercial images, mass culture and internet fashions.
Practices of instruction-based art, artistic experiences related to the body, identity, self-representation and gender studies were among the topics of the workshop. In the students’ videos, normally characterised by a homologating nature, the tutorial was deconstructed and emancipated from its rigid structures and was used to represent shifting collective and individual identities and highly personal visions of the body. The workshop culminated in an exhibition of the participants’ work curated by Corinne Mazzoli and Alma Elena Cardoso at the Italian Cultural Institute in Mexico City.
Project supported by the Italian Council (10th edition, 2021), a program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
SCREENING SCHEDULE:
A little obsessed (how to lose one hundred thirty-seven pounds)
Director: Ameyalli Avendaño Coronel
Synopsis
The experience of eating disorders and the obsession with excessive workout are the centre of a narration that requires from women something they are not able to achieve. Food disorders and obsession with excessive physical exercise are fundamental in the narrative that denigrates women by demanding the grotesque: the embodiment of the feminine as servant and object of consumption. The video portrays the search for this corporality, the frustration and sacrifice towards an impossible achievement, that is a life that recognizes the skin by the inch and where displaying happiness becomes a political position.
Profile
Writer, researcher, visual artist and workshop coordinator and student of Literature and Philosophy at the Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla. The themes that she is more interested in are loneliness, self-portrait, death, love, perception of the body, migration, gender violence, human rights and musical expression. In 2018 the Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla awarded Amevalli with the Eusebio Francisco Kino, SJ. Medal.
Pelos
Director: Andrés Timm
Synopsis
Pelos (Hairs) suggests reconnecting with body hair. Using comedy and graphic techniques, this short film drives the audience to develop a new perception of what has socially been perceived as ugly or undesirable. Each frame, may it be of thin and thick hairs, offers the viewer a new vision of the body with a very distinctive Mexican voice.
Profile
Andrés Federico Timm Gopar (Oaxaca, 2000) is a Communication student at the Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla. Interested in comedy and its cultural possibilities, he has found a way of expressing himself through sound and moving images.
(Inter) Personal
Regia/Director: Camila López Cuspinera
Synopsis
Sexuality, trauma, toxicity, love, confusion. By showing environments and images of emotions such as confusion, despair, sadness and anger, (Inter) personal talks about the moment of becoming aware of the co-dependency in love and what shape this awareness may take.
Profile
Mila López (2000) is a photographer and visual artist, currently a contemporary arts student at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla. Her artistic production addresses themes such as melancholy, self-portrait, body visions and daily life in the city.
Corte y queda
Director: Valeria Doménica Rosas Hernández
Synopsis
Corte y queda is an exercise to criticise the advertising language in order to prove to what extent it influences stereotypes of women, specifically as regards their dietary patterns. Through metaphors, the work openly faces the fact that eating disorders are sometimes the result of such stereotypes. The sculpture – chips and melted marshmallow – revolves around the food “forbidden” to those attempting to reach the perfection of their body according to beauty standards.
Profile
Valeria Doménica Rosas Hernández (Oaxaca, 2000) is a student of Contemporary Art at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla. She develops her artistic work through video art, and presently she focuses on analysing the female body and eating disorders through the language of the media.
Tótem TV (ep. 1)
Director: Jorge Medina
Synopsis
Tótem TV (ep. 1) visualises how, when stored in the brain, images go through a process of metamorphosis and are transformed into images of our memory. Just like the memories that inhabit our minds, these images are constantly being reproduced, modified and reconstructed over time, creating, through slow reproduction, a broken landscape, where memory is torn and then built.
Profile
Jorge Medina (México, 1998), visual artist. His main objective is to create indirect connections through art, to produce images that do not portray but evoke the static condition of language in the image. The ever-changing topic of identity becomes the subject matter of his work. He is currently a student of Contemporary Art at the Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, in Mexico.
Gestos fútiles – Futile Gestures
Director: María José Casazza
Synopsis
Mending means solving, putting back all the pieces to hide to conceal a fissure. But how can we stitch together what can no longer be reshaped? Futile gestures shows the brutal and desperate act of mending, even after destruction. An act of resistance in a culture so intent on punishing and fragmenting our bodies, where failure and brokenness are driven towards the private dimension. The video suggests embracing what is damaged and predisposing ourselves towards change in an attempt to recompose life in its new forms.
Profile
Artist and curator from Xalapa, México. She focuses on intimacy, the body and domestic reality through textile art, painting, artbooks and research. Her work has been exhibited in various Mexican cities, as well as in Hull (UK), Los Angeles and Oregon (USA). She is currently attending an artistic residency in Munive Arte Contemporáneo. Furthermore, she is a collaborator at Error, a space for research and creation in Puebla, and co-founder and active member of the collective Chiflale a tu padre.
Cómo gustarle a un hombre promedio heterosexual en 5 sencillos pasos – How to get an average straight man to like you in 5 easy steps
Director: Nicole Fernández de la Peña
Synopsis
Starting from the idea and structure of the tutorial, this video shows- through a critical and ironic view- five different ways in which a woman is expected to behave according to stereotypes and the male gaze. Thanks to its visual elements, repetitions and speed, the video emphasises the violence involved in the act itself.
Profile
Nicole Fernández was born in Puebla, Mexico on January 25th /1999. She is currently a student of Contemporary Art at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla. Her artwork refers to themes related to family, discomfort, identity, violence, and fears. Her research entitled Micromachismos como forma de violencia en Twitter (2020) is part of the institutional repository of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla. She participated in the collective exhibition Hiper-presente(s) confrontar lo banal at the Minive Arte Contemporáneo Gallery (2021) and was part of the expo-art sale Sendero in Tlaxcala (2021). She participated in the LAVA workshop by Carol Espíndola (2020) about the incubation of ideas in authorial photographic projects and in the workshop On tutorials, stereotypes and body visions (2022) directed by Corinne Mazzoli with the aim of entering the world of audiovisual production.
Instrucciones para localizar huellas – Instructions for locating traces
Director: Rodolfo Suárez Montesinos
Synopsis
Instrucciones para localizar huellas (Instructions for locating traces) is a video that wishes to amplify the concept of scars and marks, and does this by relating them to the landscape that constantly changes, leaving “ruins” as part of their metamorphic presence. Localizing traces on the body, in a landscape and in time means being able to recognize not only the history of a place or a region, but to accept alterations as a key element to construct one’s own Self.
Profile
Multidisciplinary artist born in Tlaxcala, Mexico (2001), Rodolfo presented a binational France-Mexico group show Imaginario/Imaginaire (France-Mexico) at the Galería del Agua (2020), Tlaxcala. His work is displayed at the group show Oblique glances at Tlaxcala’s Art Museum (2021) and scored second at the Tlaxcala State Visual Arts Contest in the photography category (2021). Rodolfo is currently working on an art project funded by the Mexican Secretariat for Culture and has had 3 solo shows and 11 group shows. He is presently attending the course to obtain his bachelor in Contemporary Art at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla.
Looking Mirror
Director: Paola Cruz Godinez
Synopsis
Paola’s video represents dysmorphia, the constant competition and submission of women’s bodies to the rigid social rules. Observing the stereotypes in popular culture, with which people interact throughout their lives, Paola decides to investigate childhood, using the doll as a stereotype of women in male thinking. The project was conducted with a touch of infantilism that spreads throughout the video and triggers a reflection on what we leave in the hands of little girls and boys, who despite seeming so defenseless and normalized, are the carriers of the next images.
Profile
Paola Cruz Godínez (Pachuca, Hidalgo, 2002) is a growing artist who is studying Contemporary Art at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla. She discovered her interest while studying more about art and how far she can go with it. She talks about her own body making use of the casename “unusualme” as the character who represents her eating disorder, pursuing the goal of sharing it with other people through artistic practice. Paola communicates starting from her body, from the “I”, and presents a social problem with the aim of bring together those who suffer from this disorder, or wish to learn more about it. She questions the tameness of the body as imposed by fashion and the media and reflects on the dysmorphias that these approaches generate on the idea we have of the body. She developed a great interest towards the corporeal and multidisciplinary using techniques such as illustration, paintings, comics and performative videos, etc. Her objective is to create channels where people can question such tameness.
PROGRAMMMERS:
Corinne Mazzoli was born in La Spezia, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 2008. In 2012 she obtained a MA in Visual Arts at the IUAV University of Venice. For years her artistic flair has been using videos, photos, installations and performances and has been inspired by the latest trends in fashion and lifestyle, which she analyses with an ironic and critical approach. In particular, Mazzoli explores the identity constructs and gender stereotypes in relation to online representations. Her latest works combine research and pedagogical practice, paving the way to collaborations and presentations at MA*GA Museum, Palazzo Grassi, the Korean Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennial (IT), Mediterranea Biennale (SMR).
Alma Elena Cardoso focuses her research on the role of artistic work in the global world, on the feminist theory of social reproduction, and on the curatorial and critical practices in Latin America. She holds a degree in Art History and a master’s degree in Aesthetics and Contemporary Art Theory. She has participated in curatorial and research projects with institutions such as the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (UNAM), the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), the Museo Amparo, the Centro Cultural España en México and the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, among the others. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal of cultural criticism Klastos, and of the journal of critical art theory Entkünstung. She coordinates the BA in Contemporary Art and the MA in Cultural Management at IBERO Puebla, Mexico.
