aXolotl`s

23 October - 19 November
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[MARS]
DIEG
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O RA
7 James St
Windsor VIC 3181
Australia
MIRE
Black Box curated
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T: 03 9521 7517
F: 03 9521 7521
E: [email protected]
by Brie Trenerry
Special thanks to Brie Trenerry, Andy Dinan, Mia Salsjo, Sophia Hewson,
Anabelle Lacroix and Hannah Garden.
Designed by Diego Ramirez
addressing the physiological, historical and material aspects of the axolotl’s story.
I AM, HE IS, IS HE?
It’s what outside the frame that’s scary -Matthew Barney
1
Humans have always loved identifying themselves with animals, tigers, sharks or maybe praying mantis for others. As much as they are distinct from humans,
animals constitute part of human’s symbolic world, world of comparisons. The
shared resemblances between animal and human worlds, bodies and behaviour
inspire allegories in our storytelling2; think about Animal Farm, Red Dog, The
Lion King or so many other Disney movies. Aren’t these titles most revealing of our
own projections?
The story of the axolotl is different. The myth surrounding the axolotl emerged
through observation, but its celebrity was fuelled by a scientific dispute in the
18th century. In a spirit of classification and of study of the natural world at the
time, scientists transferred the axolotl from being a fish to a salamander
category, due to the discovery of its unusual qualities. In fact, the axolotl is a
salamander frozen in its larva stage (similar to the tadpole before becoming a
frog). Un-metamorphosed, the axolotl possesses qualities of regeneration and of
metamorphosis that have been widely experimented with in labs - amputations,
transplantations - and generated folklore and literary fiction that frequently applied
these qualities to the human world.
As a guide to the dead for the heaven, the axolotl was already well known in the
indigenous Mexican Aztec culture as one of the god of death, and for long being
seen as monstrous. Fictional narratives and fantasy imagery developing since
the 20th century have dropped like a new coat of the back of the animal. In his
work Diego Ramirez exploits the complex layers of symbolism that surrounds the
axolotl, particularly in contemporary culture that sees the anthropomorphic animal
as symbol of hybridity, primitivism, a phallic symbol or a pokémon. A Google-image
search will give you an array of possibilities. On the verge of mainstream culture,
the axolotl has really become a cultural icon on a globalised stage.
The axolotl may be human looking with its little eyes, wide mouth, arms and
little fingers, yet it is alien, translucent with impenetrable eyes having no lids. He
is the perfect other. In Diego Ramirez’s exhibition, the scientific illustrations in
the exhibition bounce of the dominant figure of the axolotl in the video, together
1
Interview in The Telegraph, 13/07/13
2
Referring to animals’ ‘power of evocation’ in Jean Bruno Renard,
‘L’axoltl: de la controverse scientifique au mythe littéraire’ dans Sociétés, numéro
108, 2010-2012, De Boeck, pp19-32.
Notions of hybridity, ambivalence and duality are concepts at the centre of postcolonial theory in the works of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and in the poetry of
Édouard Glissant. In this work, Diego Ramirez is taping into this context, applying
his own identity and relationship to it. The artist pushes the malleability of the
character, which is part of its appeal and fascination: from the transformation of
the axolotl as an indigenous figure to its presence in the aquarium in Paris, which
generated the eponym short-story by Julio Cortázar (1952), to its mass production
as fantasy characters bridging several cultures, to a half-human, half-animal
persona performing everyday rituals. The axolotl becomes, in the exhibition, at
the crossing of these notions rather than being subsumed by them. For Ramirez,
the axolotl represents a ‘consumer version of ethnicity that has become mass
media’3, which highlights our current market economy continuously extending its
grip to furthest areas of culture.
In Julio Cortázar Axolotl, the otherness of the animal sparks the author’s obsession
and transformation: “the eyes of the axolotl spoke to me of the presence of a
different life, of another way of seeing”.4 In his video, Ramirez replicates the slow
paste and mundane life of the axolotl, and its sense of immobility that are at the
heart of novel. With a personal touch in the Australianness of the décor, Diego
Ramirez introduces ambivalence in his character where the axolotl is at home.
Perhaps that’s where lays, in small moments, waiting for the washing machine
cycle to end, a strongest sense of being?
Perhaps reminiscent of a Melbourne mafia feature-film such as Animal Kingdom
(2010), an element of horror takes you by surprise in Ramirez’s video. The scene
could point to a psychological state of the character or activate in your memory
surrealist films, certainly the eye-slicing scene in Un Chien Andalou by Salvador
Dalí and Luis Buñel (1928). aXolotl’s Happiness is a key work by Diego Ramirez
after Radish (2013), sharing key notions of longing, otherness and performativity
with an attempt in finding a tipping point where one’s own idea of identity confronts
the one projected upon oneself by others; should we be waiting for a coup in a final
transformation, for a trilogy?
Anabelle Lacroix
September 2014
3
4
Interview with the artist on 23/07/14
Julio Cortázar Axolotl, 1952
Diego Ramirez
aXolotl’s Happiness, HD Video, 7:15min (loop), 2014
Videography by Nathan Ceddia, SFX Make up by Moya O’Brien, Location sound by Ryan Granger
Excercise for Joy I-XII, Archival Inkjet prints on metallic photo paper, 210x297mm, 2014
aXolotl’s Joy, Archival Inkjet print on cotton canvas, 1680x297mm, 2014
aXolotl’s Rapture, Digital Animation, 1:00min (loop), 2014
aXolotl’s Extasis (detail), Light box vitrine and found objects, dimensions variable, 2014