Ana Alenso

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Artist statement

I grew up in Venezuela, a petrostate where the extravagance of Caribbean nature coexists with everyday violence. Shaped by a colonial legacy, the country’s history has been determined by oil extraction and its social and geopolitical consequences. I grew up in the ’80s hearing: we are a rich country because we have oil, yet everything around me contradicted that phrase. In 2009 I emigrated to Germany, where questions about my petro-identity and the so-called resource curse haunted my work for more than a decade, up to the present. Through sculpture, installation, assemblage, photography, and video, I research the material and speculative dimensions of extractivism. Mines are enigmatic places. I believe they hold the true roots of modern society. I am interested in how multiple dimensions converge and condense within every mine at once: geological, geopolitical, and historical. I have walked with my camera around oil platforms, and gold, copper, iron, and uranium mines, watching my step so as not to fall into some chemical lagoon or expose myself to high levels of radioactivity. All of these experiences implicate the body, and that is why they stay with you, not as anecdotes, but as a way of understanding how mining, oil, and minerals are not merely resources, but also archives: material records of the relations of power, violence, and desire that determine our culture. My artistic practice begins with collecting and salvaging scrap metal, hoses, oil drums, drills, cables,...

Artwork