Juana Mendez Vizcaya

juanamendez99@yahoo.es

X 2014- 2015

Thread on top of tissue

For 2 years I traveled and I walked Europe like

a roaming traveler. As a nomad that is
discovering a new world and without money
to pay a rent or a hostel, I ending traveling
from city to city with a little bag and an
agenda. Because I didn 't had maps, lonely
planets or smartphones, I started to draw little
maps of the places that I had to go. At the end
my agenda was fool of this maps, that were
the drawing testimony of my foot steps in
Europe. I recreate those maps mixing them with
the goal of creating a new city, a new
cartography one of my own They where a
sincere testimony of my experience as an
immigrant, of the travels that I made that
many time were truncate and remade in other
places. That is why I sewed them in a blanket,
like the one immigrant have in where the put
merchandise to sell in the street, and they can
easily pick up, if the police came by. In that
way I will have the same mechanism they use
but to show and then take with me my
memory as an immigrant.


Snow stories 2013
Comic
This Project was researched in
Europe most of all in the city of
Granada, Spain; in Granada
immigrants were interviewed and
encouraged to tell their life stories in
a foreign city and country, where
no matter how welcome they are,
they will always feel a bit alien.
Instead of being a political discourse
about immigration, this project
pretends to touch upon the more
subtle and intimate aspects of their
daily life. It also pretends to bring to
the foreground the micro, local and
subjective human facts that
apparently do not have any effect
but in reality they play a key role
in the culture of the globalization of
resistance.

The project also emphasizes the fact that

the basic elements that make up the
process of daily life can be used to
reconstruct human socialization and
interactions with others; it is these
emotional bonds that are fundamental to
build the social relations of a new kind.
By using artistic methods as the medium
in which the realities of the human
emotional and intimate stand out above
the political realities, we are able to better
visualize and understand these ones thus
opening our sensibility to them. This
project will be the first step in
establishing a way to transmit stories that
show a different way to see and
understand immigration. As result of the
interviews with the immigrants I made a
comic Snow Stories in which in a very
simple way I draw the first time most of
this immigrants so the first snow. For to
show that we are all humans and this
person that we call others are as human
as us.

l
l

The other shoes 2013

Performance
The second part of the project result in a performance
in the city of Granada. Performance in which I adopted
my new immigrant statue. As an artist that want to
survive in this world I find extremely difficult the
work conditions. Is hard to find job contracts, most
people think that your job is not worth it to pay, and
some times we suffer for discrimination. As an Artist I
suffer all of this situation, and I find extremely hard to
gain my life of my artistic work. As my new condition
of immigrant was growing in me and I started to
suffer the lack of job opportunities, and health
assistant; I started to worry and recognize those other
that as me were immigrants, and the had a hard time
finding jobs, and were suffering of discrimination and
loneliness. I wanted to tell the story of us, but as a non
political point of view. Asking those immigrants what
was the most shocking and fantastic thing that they
experiment in Europe all of them told me that the first
snow was one of the most important experience. So I
decided to adopt fully my new roll, selling my
products in this case a comic of telling their first
experience with snow. The goal was to adopt this new
roll, to educate and inform people about a political
problem but enphasise in the human side of it, through
art raise awareness about tis others realities
immigrants and artist.

Bell Group Concert San Francsco

Church, Bogot Colombia 2012
l

The bell group emerge as the result of the

experience of working with Llorence Barber
and Monserat Palacios in their visit to
Bogot. Both are sound artists and they
have been working with bell towers
around the world. We chose the bell tower
of the San Francisco church in Bogot
because the neighbors demand the church, to
stop the bells sound accusing the church of
sound contamination. With that concert we
wanted to redeem the bell sound, because it
was not sound contamination but i music,
it is something that is alive, that has a
history, those bells had around 200 years.
But we have lost the use of those bells by
considered them antiques objects. What we
want is to bring life in to the bells and
that it have a voice again.

l Iglesia San Francisco concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4pacsvk0sA

The Waiting collective 2011

The collective en Espera is a collective made
by 7 people most of all multidisciplinary
artists, that work with resistance group La
Carpa. La Carpa is a group compound by
ex workers of the Materno Infantil in
Bogot Colombia. A hospital that was well
known because it was free and also by his
good attention. The Materno Infantil was
an extension of the San Juan de Dios
Hospital, and it was in charge of all
childbirth . A great part of the population of
Bogot were born there. In 2001 the hospital
was shut down, by the new health laws in
were Colombians has to start to pay by
their health insurance. Most of the workers
were fired without paying their pensions. A
group of those worker most of them
women didn 't accept that and occupied the

hospital in state of resistance.

They clash with the police, with the lawyers, in order to maintain the hospital, that is
patrimony of Colombia, and to fight for their pensions. As a Collective we make 3 tours inside
the hospital, our objective was to transmit the memory of the Materno Infantil, through
audiovisual means and artistic languages in order to make visible the abandon situation in
which is now the hospital that once was one of the most important of Colombia. Our Goal was
to make visible the situation of the workers who were fired without any justice and now they
are waiting for their pensions, and since then they made resistance in order to guard the
nations patrimony, a nation that forgot about them.

El Eden 2011

Water Colour/ paper

The Eden is not only a biblical paradise, but thanks to the drug
most famous drug dealer Pablo Escobar and his appetite for eccentric
things, the Eden appears in a little town in Colombia named Puerto
Triunfo near to the Magadalena river. Not by the hand of god but
by the hands of thousands of men manage by the all powerful
Pablo build hills, lakes, valleys in order to recreate a Colombian
Version of that paradise. Pablo arrange to bring a huge Russian
Antonov airplane,that landed in a little airplane track in his
vacation house in Puerto Triunfo with all kinds of animals from
exotic parts of the world. After his dead The two most read journals
El Tiempo and El Espaciomake a head line publicity of his dead,
Years later after his dead one big hippopotamus escaped from The
Eden a travel by the Magadalena river and suffers the same owners
dead in hands of the same state.
To see images:

http://juanamendez.wix.com/portafolio#!el-eden

Your love was a journal from yesterday 2009

Water colour/paper

From love to hate an from hate to love there's only

one step. The love make his presence in politics
with the same passion that in a relationship, it
blind us, it make us angry and happy, it obsess us
it make us passionate. The Politics end up being a
great soap opera where the media already has
choosing to show to the public the frivolities,
showiness, and a pair of lobotomies for the
spectator follow it, loving or hating their
characters without informing about the truth of
the loving presidents of Latin America.
Following the romantic of the subject I don t have
more to think that presidents love their people,
love the power and as Hector Lavoe say: as paper
support everything as the same way I treat them.
To see images:
http://juanamendez.wix.com/portafolio#!tu-amores-un-periodico-de-ayer

(From Inside) 2009

From the Refuge Series)

Installation and drawing
A reflection about how space had a direct
impact in humans, and how them need to
have a space to be defined. Since the
moment of born we have a room, a
house, a building, a neighborhood, a city, a
country, a continent.
We grow up in a place, a room, that is a
reflect of our selfs, the walls talk for us
and that space give a description of the
person that is living inside. From inside
go to most intimate space the one is
imaginary, the drawing is in the wall is
the testimony of the head of the person
that made it and habitat that space.

Refuge (From the refuges

series) 2009

Photography and Hair extensions

As humans we have a kind of primary
necessity to seek refuge in a shelter. As
humans are looking for a shelter, other
things need as we do a shelter a refuge.
Money has his refuge in banks, art
pieces in museums, religion in temples,
Buddhist seek refuge in dharma, and
others seek for refuge in appearance, in
looks. It's like we need to be protected,
shelter, comfort.

Existences ( From the refuge

series ) 2009
Artificial Hair

Cambuche (From the Refuge series)

Instalation 2007
A Cambuche is a popular word in
Colombia to describe a little house made
of plastic and diverse materials, that
are common made by homeless people,
or people that were displace by violence.
This installation was made in The Los
Andes University in Bogotota, one of
the most prestigious Universities in
Colombia in where surveillance is
extreme. The idea was to made a
reflection of the problem of violence
and poverty The cambuche last 4
months and rumors of somebody living
in a cambuche inside the university
start to circulate between the students

Other works:
Draings C:

http://juanamendez.wix.com/portafolio#!
colorhttp://juanamendez.wix.com/portafolio#!color

Draings BW
http://juanamendez.wix.com/portafolio#!page-13

Horses 2010
Water coulor-paper
http://juanamendez.wix.com/portafolio#!caballos

De Segunda. 2010
Colour pencils and ater colour/ paper.
http://juanamendez.wix.com/portafolio#!de-segunda

Contact:
juanamendez99@yahoo.com