Photographer | DOP | Content Creator | Visual Artist
What Dreams Are Made Of
"With «What Dreams Are Made Of» the photo performer Irene Cruz moves on two historical paths. One derives from the romance of someone like German artist Caspar David Friedrich, whose male loneliness she intrinsically transfers into an image of female friendship and togetherness. The other path traces back from surrealism with its word-image combination and is given here in a form of artistical alliance by the poetess Sara Bounajm and her wild verses."
Natias Neutert, Artist, author, poet & orator
''Thank you for coming, carrying your unnecessary luggage.
Thank you for wrecking our pretentions, and for turning us into humans.''
Berlin based video artist and photographer Irene Cruz (Madrid, 1987) is creating a turning point on the Media World. Her work is gaining a remarkable personality, with a recognizable style by everyone nowadays. Light is indeed a very important part of her work, which makes her explore and experiment in Northern Europe. This time, the steps of Irene Cruz stop at The Ballery, offering an exhibition, in a project together with other two artists, that won’t leave the public indifferent.
“What Dreams Are Made Of” is the name of the first copy of Irene Cruz’s little quarterly photo-book, displayed as a collectable fanzine, presenting in this occasion, thirteen of the pictures featured in the photo-book, together with the poems of Sara Bounajm.
“What Dreams Are Made Of” is an experimental project started by Irene Cruz after publishing her first collective foto-book Blumen, where she already counted with the participation of the poetess Sara Bounajm. This time, Cruz decided to share the photographs with the Sara Bounajm, encouraging her to interpret them, making them of her own, getting inspired in order to create and giving so, voice to them. Nevertheless, the photographs will be brought to life not only through words. The Pianist Nhung Nguyen, inspired by Cruz’s work has also given her own interpretation to these photographs through her experimental piano music.
This exhibition seeks to create an atmosphere where poetry, music, photography and video-art come together generating a total harmony. Conceiving the exhibition space as a place where the tenacity of the stories told through Cruz’s photography fuses with the power of the word by Sara Bounajm and the interpretation of the pianist Nhung Nguyen. A trip to which the spectator is invited to join them in their insatiable search, and that promises an approach to new forms, formats and means of expression.
It is for me a pleasure to be able to work together with these magnificent artists, supporting them in their journey of experimentation, creation, work and development.
Carlota Ibañez de Aldecoa Silvestre, Curator
Curatorial Text at The Ballery (2014)
"When I started writing I couldn’t stop thinking about all of the places that I have already visited and the memories that the landscapes and I built together. I saw myself walking those paths, leaving behind all my old languages and finding a new one. I wondered whether they would stay where I left them once I come back, when I already knew what migration implies: a continuous dialogue between my past and my present. I hope the reader feels invited to join us, since dialoguing with the reader is an essential part of this project."
Sara Bounajm, Writer & muse