Elsa Borrero

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The photographs of Elsa Borrero reference that distinct moment in the history of images when the limits of representation were explored in virtually every medium. These images bring to mind the film montages of Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren , the photography of Jerry Uelsmann or Floris Michael Neussus and more recently the video works of Piilotti Rist. All these artists have produced complex images by densely layering negatives, film or video; the resulting compositions are metaphorically rich and wildly surreal.

Elsa Borrero’s photographs also arise from a position in the history of identity politics where nature and the feminine were seen as ‘essentially’ intertwined and ‘naturally’ determined. In this sense these images also reference the works of Ana Mendieta or Judy Chicago and their desire to find in an exalted communion with the body and the natural a deeper understanding of self.

While Elsa’s images arise from these historical roots they also seek to re-invest these operations with contemporary conceptual issues that bring to our attention the environmental crisis of our age and the political upheavals that have characterized the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries.

—Humberto Ramirez, visual art editor

July 2011

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Elsa Borrero is a choreographer, photographer, lighting designer, and creator and collaborator of multi-media projects. Her photography work is mostly in private collections, as well as in the Arts Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C. and the museum of Modern Art in Medellín, Colombia. She has danced in Argentina and in New York City at Alvin Nikolais Dance Lab and Merce Cunningham Studio. She lives in Vermont.

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