Catalina Jaramillo

Catalina Jaramillo’s work explores the universal notions of transience, loss, grief, oneness and impermanence. Through participatory installations that combine aspects of performance, video, photography and sound; she places herself in emotionally and spiritually trying states in order to overcome personal boundaries of pain and experience the mythopoetic transformational power of art. She is the winner of the 2013 South Florida Cultural Consortium.

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The South Florida Cultural Consortium Juried Exhibition

Pleiadian, 1997-2013 

I shred 16 years worth of journals, diaries, 2D work, and documents that I have created since 1997 (I was 17). I shred over 11,000  pages - over 60 books- of my past to truly let go and make space for the unknown. 

The mountain is recycled at the end of the show.

This painful action proves rewarding. 

  Performance | Installation, 2013

90 days starting June 22 2013

Years ago, in 1997, I was introduced to the diaries of Frida Kahlo. For a whole year we (a humanities group in school) had to devour them and analyze her life. I decided that I too wanted to leave behind a detailed and sincere compilation of writings and works that explained they way I saw my life to others. I would dream of having a retrospective someday, in 2060 and a room holding hundreds of these journals: my life in anyone’s hands. I enjoyed the feeling of being see through. 

So far, I have over 60 of these books. Most are custom bound and each has hundreds of drawings, sketches, stories, thoughts, and truths. 

Before winning the SFCC I was constantly thinking that I wanted my work to shift. I realized that the kind of work I want to make and its impact should me made for an audience that isn’t limited to the arts. I realized I wanted to facilitate something, serve in some way, or make work, even to those who hate the arts. 

The day after I found out I won. 

This piece (so far untitled) symbolizes my commitment to that realization. By “destroying” (though I am not burning or burying but rather transforming) these books, with the audience as witness, I allow myself to let go of any control or plan. Thousands of lumens projected above me symbolize the trust and faith in not knowing what comes next. 

Letting go or life-scale plans; of hours of planning, writing, and drawing;   and the objects themselves is certainly the most difficult part as these are all extensions of myself. Uncertainty is scary, terrifying perhaps. But the promise of this action to be a way to defeat fear and create a lot of physical and emotional space for something new promises to be more rewarding than any preconceived notions that are mine.

At the end of the show, in September 2013, I will not take my shredded journals with me. I will leave them for the Museum to dispose of: a metaphor for a museum’s Registrar’s process and a literal expression of alchemy and transmutation.

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The Picnic

Participatory action, July 29, 2012

400 meals, 9 hours

I prepare a meal for 400 people.

We all have the same food, the same utensils, and the same space.

Inspired by the Chinese Cultural Revolution, American Soup Lines, Siha Sutta, and the Pchum Ben, I decided to cook a wholesome meal for a large group.

In a visit to Beijing a couple years back, I remember going to a temple where monks made food for any visitors. The day I visited I was given a small and very humble bowl of rice and cabbage. It was a gentle dish that tasted like generosity. This memory relates to stories of wondering monks with bowls, and families sharing humble meals in times of famine.

This piece resembles the piece I executed in 2003 where I made a meal for 27 people. I washed their feet, embroidered their napkins with their names, served abundant food. These were people I somewhat knew. For The Picnic I cook for 

This event is free and open to the public.

First installment: The Picnic: Sunday July 29, 2012. Miami beach Botanical Garden.

Click-through links: 

Beached Miami

Guaspsita Blogcito

Flavorpill

South Florida Daily Blog 

South Beach Breaking News

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I Thank You

I realize that a dramatic shift is to occur now. To support this, I start compiling all those extrinsic things that I have home. I donate 84 cubic feet of items. 

A couple of months later I set up in a museum setting another 150 cubic feet of items I do not need. 

That process spearheads an intense process of cleansing and renewal. I donate another six carloads of items.

I feel all the new space created inside me. I am now ready for a new beginning. 

To see the Aesthetics and Values 2013 catalog, please click here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151476191539647.1073741828.136030499646&type=1 

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Ad Hoc

Performance and Installation, 2014

Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale

Courtesy of the artist

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Eternal Living (It's All The Love I've Got)

Performance, 2011

190 minutes

I lay motionless while focusing only in god

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You Are Always Here

Installation, 2011

Shortly after my mother's passing I arrange all her belongings in an art setting. I attempt to prove that no amount of objects could replace the actual presence of a human being, I discover instead that we leave traces of cells, DNA, scents, memories, and fluids in everything we ever come in contact with. The space became charged, very charged; my mother was invoked.

Press:

Daughter, Colleen. Catalina Jaramillo: Mother’s Keeper. Sun Sentinel | Florida April 1, 2011 | Digital Article

Suarez De Jesus, Carlos. Artists Explore the Afterlife. Miami New Times, April 2011 | Digital Article

Suarez De Jesus, Carlos. Review: Catalina Jaramillo's "You Are Always Here" at Dimensions Variable. Miami New Times, March 2011 | Digital Article

Exhibition page | Gallery Archive

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The Apothecary

Durational participatory performance I meet one person at a time and create a healing substance or object based on what they share with me. Materials: botanicals, organic herbs, marine salts, therapeutic essential oils, photocopies, glass, minerals, crystals, geometry.

“Information on breast cancer resources and healthy lifestyles will be featured at a health fair Sept. 21 at the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center. Come join me!”

— 

Health fair to focus on breast cancer

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Sleepover

Performance | Installation, 2004

I knit a tent with my mother. We spend months. We use the yarn we used for Cocoon. We buy 600 sq. feet of sod and turn the Frost Art Museum into a camping site for the duration of the exhibition. The weather and light in the space are controlled. A prism is set to a timer and projects a rainbow across the site twice per day.

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Noise IV

Performance | Installation, 2002

123 minutes | 36 days

A site-specific piece for the Fifth Biennial at The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood

Press:

Mills, Michael. Bi-Curious: The Art & Culture Center's Biennial Show Includes Some Surprises. Broward New Times, May 2011 | Digital Article

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The Memorial (Mom)

Performance, 2011

All of my mother's belongings are arranged in a space after her passing. The audience is invited on the closing date to come have some candy and some wine to celebrate my mother's life. Everyone is invited to take any/every item that belonged to my mother.

Press:

Tracy, Liz. "Catalina Jaramillo's "You Are Always Here" Explores Her Deceased Mother's Objects." Miami New Times. Mar 11 2011(2011) Digital Article

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You Are Always Here  (The Passing)

Installation, 2010

After a separation I place all our shared objects in a gallery setting

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Island Universes

During a three-day long fair, I spend my time in silence. I explore issues of survival and faith. I fast in a convention center that is scheduled to be burnt down once the fair is over. 60 hours, 2012

Island Universes: 3 days, handmade kaftan, water, silence, mat, micro-green trays, sleeping surface, candle, incense, battery powered lamp.

Performance is the space and time where the "if only" holds true in the most beautiful way: triumphantly within its difficulty, realization, and failure.

Island Universes

 lies not in achievement, completion, or success. Realization lies within performance's futility. The artist is not the hero who comes back from a battle. The artist is the seeker, the traveler. I constantly seek a fulfilling understanding of the role human life has as an agent of impermanence and transcendence. When I think of our lives' potential, like the expectant mother, I tenderly space out in awe, in love. Our life in this planet could be so much brighter, so much more rewarding. "If only I could be in love with source for one more day", "if only I could hold my values high up in the sky one hour longer", "if only I could only feed myself and those I love food that is full of life force".  This piece is informed by eastern and middle eastern belief systems, and an awareness of the world's current social, political, and financial circumstances. If forced to live with just enough to survive, what would our thoughts be like? What would our relationships look like? What would our health be like?  What would our values be? Would I learn to be constant communion with 

source?

 Would I let go of fear? Would I realize we could do much more 

together

?  

In Island Universes Jaramillo explores issues of impermanence, vulnerability, and survival by spending three days  in active meditation without leaving the space or taking a break. As a symbol of mankind's new era, the artist will spend over 60 hours in silence meditating, praying, drinking water, and sleeping. 

The audience is encouraged to participate physically, energetically, or mentally.

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Cocoon

Performance, 2004

My mother is wearing a nightgown. I don't. We look into each other's eyes and exchange a 4 oz. glass of 2% non-organic milk. We kiss. She wraps me with 12 pounds of yarn, spool by spool while chanting out loud. By the time she is done a Pyrex bowl cracks on top of a portable electric stove.

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The Apothecary

Durational participatory performance 300 minutes In a secluded space throughout the festival I meet one person at a time and create a healing substance or object based on what they share with me. Materials: botanicals, organic herbs, marine salts, therapeutic essential oils, photocopies, glass, minerals, crystals, geometry.

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Milagros

Performance, 2003

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Big Ben 1000

Installation, 2012

90 x 144 inches aprox

From the exhibition You Are Always Here, 2011 I saved over 60 puzzles that my mother had partially put together throughout the decade she was treated for cancer. I wanted to do this piece for a while... where all landscapes are the lands she could not physically travel to but nevertheless did. All of these puzzles (each 1000 pieces) are displayed as solved as my mother left them. The audience is invited to solve the puzzles.

The result will be roughly a 180" by 240" puzzle depicting an imaginary land where mom probably sleeps now.

Impermanence Announcement Packet |

Press Release

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I Am a Soul, I Have a Body So Let's Play

Installation, 2003

trees, transfers, rice, rice cooker, piano, xylophone, pulling xylophone, 400 lbs of sugar, table, triangle, nylon, 400 lbs of rice, marshmallow peeps, light, bulb, paper lamp, white circle puzzle, low table, rice candy, stickers, artist's journal