Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Maya Watanabe

Bullet

Vidéo | 4k | couleur | 11:0 | Pérou, Pays-Bas | 2021

The surface of the skull is smooth as marble, except for the fractures surrounding a small, round bullet hole. The camera penetrates this opening, revealing the rock-like landscape within, of deep ravines, jagged-edged craters, and bony reefs. Here and there we see a web hanging, inhabited by a spider. Bullet records the skull of an unidentified body from the Peruvian violent period, which raged from 1980 to 2000 and took 70,000 lives. Since then, many remains have been found but cannot be identified and they still hover, as it were, under the status “NN” ­–“No Name.” The film tries to shed light on the forces that penetrate the lives of people: natural or social forces that overtake observation, the imagination and memory.Bullet constitutes an indictment of arbitrary executions and judicial vacuum in which they remain.

I am a visual artist and filmmaker who works with video installations. I have had recent exhibitions at, among other places: De Pont Museum (NL), MAXXI Museum (IT); MALI – Museo de Arte de Lima (PE); Rose Art Museum (US); La Casa Encendida (ES); Palais de Tokyo (FR); Kyoto Art Center (JP); Das Fridericianum (DE); and Matadero (ES). My work has been shown at various art biennials and internationally, including Videobrasil, the 13th Havana Biennial (CU), Asian Art Biennial (TW), the 2nd Wuzhen Contemporary Art Exhibition (CN) and the Beijing Biennial (CN). I have also collaborated as audiovisual art director for stage productions in Peru, Spain, Austria and Italy. In 2018, I was granted the Han Nefkens Foundation Award. I live in Amsterdam, where I teach at the Rietveld Academie. I am currently a PhD research student at the Department of Visual Cultures - Goldsmiths, University of London.