Spanish photographic artist Ignasi Cunill has been the first 2012 artist-in-residence at TNUA’s Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (KdMoFA). During his month-long residency he has opened his studio to interact with almost a hundred visitors, also giving lectures in preparation for the site-specific photographic series “Homo Sapiens”. The work will be exhibited from April the 6th to April the 13th.
Cunill explores the relationship between what people see, name and believe to know. Claiming that commonly used juxtaposition of words, mental and tangible images reduce our perceptual capabilities, Cunill’s constructed images present disconcerting scenarios where usual ways of seeing and naming no longer apply.
In his new series “Homo Sapiens,”Ignasi Cunill sees culture and its by-products as both makers and destroyers of the human condition. From cultural fads entering our minds to chemical compounds entering our bodies, the affect of cultural intrusions is both psychological and biological. Here is how Cunill metaphorically links the human to a cultural monster, deformed by an overdose of impositions that have affected even its genetic integrity.
The series has benefited from the involvement by museum visitors, who brought cultural objects ranging from clothing to even garbage. These formed the cultural environment inhabited by the human as cultural monster.
As exotic animals are displayed in glass tanks recreating their habitat, Cunill presents a metaphorical glass tank through which the viewer may rethink what can be seen, named and known as human.