Eloísa Ibarra re-signifies the biblical myth of Babel, the story of the overambitious and frustrated attempt to build a tower to reach the divine. To do this, the artist draws on two seemingly antagonistic narrative modes. On one hand, there is the expressive warmth of the prints, which give form to the beautiful, austere images of different possible towers. An architectonic repertoire that navigates through Brueghelian airs, through Renaissance ascensions, through some Babylonian ziggurat, or through the rhythms of Mesoamerican temple steps. Fine technical quality parallels pure atmospheres of a serene, distanced beauty. On the other, there is the strict coldness of a binary system that uses an automatic translation mechanism to create new, nearly incomprehensible gibberish. In times of inexorable technological development, there seems to emerge a new Babel, one erected upon algorithmic processes. Other gods reminding us of the irredeemable limitations of that which is human. The futility of an absurd messianic restlessness.

Alfredo Torres
Curator of the exhibition


Morrison Gallery, Minnesota University, Morris, USA (octubre 2014)

Eloísa Ibarra uses the tools of communication to explore the loss of communication and the loss of meaning which follows. She seamlessly weaves together the traditional printmaking technique of engraving – the grandmother of the printed page – with QR Codes and Google Translate. Her work poetically reminds us that information is not knowledge; data is not content. On the foundation of modernist printmaking in Latin American art Ibarra layers a post-modernist critique of technological progress.

Howard Oransky
Director, Katherine E. Nash Gallery


Engravings in different traditional and digital graphic techniques, texts subjected to successive automatic translations and audio tracks accessible through QR codes incorporated in the works and on the walls of the exhibition hall.

Quarter Gallery, Regis Center for Arts, Universidad de Minnesota, Minneapolis, EE.UU. (noviembre 2013)

Instituto Cervantes, Chicago, IL, U.S. (July 2014)
Curator in Chicago: Ionit Behar
With the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay and the Consulate of Uruguay in Chicago

 

Babel, word of...
2013

Laser-engraved MDF printed in intaglio on paper and silkscreen on concrete cube
Print 10 x 10 cm / Cube: 10 x 10 x 10 cm

“That is why it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world, and from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
Genesis 10:9

The biblical text was subjected to a sequence of translations using Google Translate, from Spanish to English, from English to German and so on, into French, Russian, Polish and Chinese.
The different translations can be read on each side of the cube, using the QR code reader of a cell phone or tablet.

The QR code of the paper engraving contains the text with the final result of the string, translated back into Spanish: