Ana Gilligan
Bio
Ana Gilligan was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1971.She lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil until the nineties, and upon her return to Argentina began studying Anthropology at the UBA (University of Buenos Aires).
She then came into contact with photography and studied at the Argentinean School of Photography under the masters Alicia D'Amico, Fabiana Barreda and Joan Fontcuberta. She began working professionally as a photojournalist in 1994 and in the year 2000 decided to focus on her own authorial production. A visual artist, Gilligan uses photography as a language, and the transformations experienced by this field over the last three decades have been at the heart of her work, which explores the boundaries of photographic materiality, fictional worlds and the relationship between human beings and the environment.
Her work has been featured in several exhibitions in Brazil and Argentina, with some pieces forming part of private collections. Gilligan's most recent exhibition is Al ver verás (When you see, you will see), held at the Museo Evita-Palacio Ferreyra (Córdoba, 2023- 2024).
As of today, Gilligan lives and works in La Cumbre, Sierras de Córdoba, where in 2006 she opened the Júpiter Art Gallery, which she currently runs. There she created the Noches de Arte (Art Nights), the Semana de Arte La Cumbre (Art Week La Cumbre) and currently produces the RONDA residency, which connects artistic practice and life within nature.
Statement
I am a visual artist and a contemporary naturalist. I might have become an anthropologist, have trained as a photojournalist, am on my way to becoming an astrologist and I manage an art gallery.
My production is traversed by all these paths and the main tool of my work is the language of photography. Both the transformations that this language has undergone in the last thirty years and the research on photographic materialities run through my images: analogue and digital processes, manual interventions and the use of non-traditional supports are expressive resources that I am interested in exploring. Whatever pushes the limits of the photographic towards the wider experience of the visual.
My curiosity to observe the human species - be it from anthropology, astrology or even art - feeds the theme of my work, which increasingly intersects with questions about the environment: how do we coexist on this planet with the other species that inhabit it? Such are the sensitive questions that I reflect on as I walk and pick up elements of nature, small treasures that I then interact with in the studio while the light comes through the window and worlds are created, scenes that try to metabolise and find meaning in the chaos of contemporary life.
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
