{"id":13131,"date":"2025-04-15T19:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T19:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vagon.gallery\/?p=13131"},"modified":"2025-05-21T16:08:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T16:08:40","slug":"vizuelna-pobuna-adriane-trujillo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vagon.gallery\/en\/vizuelna-pobuna-adriane-trujillo\/","title":{"rendered":"The Visual Rebellion of Adriana Trujillo"},"content":{"rendered":"
In encounters that transcend geographical coordinates, art often becomes a meeting point of history and fiction, intimacy and politics, the body and borders. Adriana Trujillo, a Mexican film director and artist whose work emerges at the crossroads of performance, documentary film, and archival fiction, places at the center of her inquiry precisely what the media attempts to render invisible \u2014 the complex dynamics of power, migration, and the narratives that shape our collective perception of reality.<\/p>
In this interview for Vagon Portal, Trujillo speaks about her project No News Agency, contemporary forms of information and emotional manipulation, and the shifting nature of borders \u2014 both real and imagined. She reflects on the role of art in a time when images no longer possess a stable relationship to truth. Her perspective, rooted in Latin America and now expanded through her experiences in the Balkans, opens up new spaces for storytelling, where the political and the personal are not separated but instead feed into one another.<\/p>
This is a conversation about resilience, intimacy, and the power of imagination as the last remaining space of freedom.<\/p>
1.\tHow did your journey in film and visual arts begin?\nMy journey in media art began with a fascination for images and movement, driven by curiosity and the intention to discover. At one point, the camera became a tool for exploring my city. Growing up in Tijuana.. a border city with access to second-hand technology, which was relatively easy to acquire, I started experimenting with archives, Super 8 mm film, and other formats. Through these, I captured personal and collective memories within the frames of the past.<\/p> 2.\tHas your artistic practice always been interdisciplinary, or did it develop over time?\nMy work has always been interdisciplinary. Beginning with my background in dance, my early projects explored video and performance, integrating archival footage. Over time, this evolved into a deeper investigation of the borders of media, with non-fiction serving as a guiding thread. Through documentary and experimental pieces, I\u2019ve embraced multiple mediums, film, video, installation, and performance. The intersection of these forms enables me to challenge traditional boundaries and engage with complex ideas in a fluid and dynamic way.<\/p> 3.\tWhat has shaped you the most as an artist \u2013 specific events, theoretical influences, or personal experiences?\nA key factor that has shaped me as an artist is my experience of being born in a border town like Tijuana, a city defined not just by its geographical limits but by its constant crossing of borders, hybridization, and a sense of living in the margins. Growing up in this environment taught me about self-reliance, collaboration, and grassroots organization. In Tijuana, if something doesn\u2019t exist, you create it. The city is constant movement and youthful energy foster a space where artistic proposals can flourish. This spirit deeply shaped my work, leading me to organize film festivals, exhibitions, and cultural spaces, as well as produce films without the typical structures of large budgets. Instead, I\u2019ve embraced a more poetic, free-flowing narrative approach that evolves from conceptual exploration to experimental editing\u2026especially when working with archives.<\/p> This personal history intersects with my more recent experiences living in Banja Luka and engaging with Serbian culture. Moving here has sparked new inspiration, as I now navigate between Mexican and Serbian cultural landscapes, each rich with their own tensions, histories, and unique traditions. This duality is opening new paths for my creativity and reshaping my artistic lens.<\/p> On the theoretical side, I draw heavily from a range of influences that inform both my process and perspective. Filmmakers like Harun Farocki, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Godard, and Jonas Mekas inspire my engagement with visual essays as tools for critical and poetic exploration. Thinkers like Foucault, Deleuze, Adorno, and Lacan provide a framework for examining power structures, subjectivity, and the relationship between images and meaning. Critics such as Hal Foster, George Didi-Huberman, and Raymond Bellour help me understand the intersections between visual art, media, and cultural representation. Finally, the teachings of Josep Maria Catal\u00e0, my professor during my master\u2019s program in Barcelona, profoundly shaped my understanding of audiovisual language and the essayistic approach, connecting academic rigor with creative practice.<\/p> 4.\tYour work merges documentary film, experimental video, and gallery-based art. How do you balance these three worlds?\nBalancing these worlds comes naturally as they each offer a distinct way to interact with the audience. Film allows for narrative exploration, video for fragmented, poetic expression, and gallery installations bring a spatial, immersive experience. The key is weaving them together so that each medium speaks to the other, creating a unified conversation rather than distinct practices.<\/p> 5.\tHave you ever felt limited by the language of film, leading you to explore installation and performance?\nThe language of narrative film can sometimes feel too linear or confined, especially when addressing complex social issues. Nowadays, with multiple windows, we see a constant push to break boundaries in formats. Personally, a combination of non-fiction, installation, and performance provides a space for more intuitive and fragmented engagement, offering a richer and more immediate experience. These mediums expand the narrative beyond the screen, breaking the fourth wall and inviting active participation<\/p>
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