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| Ruby Rumié | www.rubyrumie.cl |
Ruby Rumié
Contemporary Art from Chile: Common Place
Artwork
As described in the last post, Rumié's current exhibit on the second floor of AMA, Common Place (Lugar Común), was created together with artist Justine Graham - both of whom are based in Santiago, Chile. The exhibition portrays the evolving subordinate relationship between Latin American housekeepers and their housewife employers, reflecting issues of gender, power, class and race. Comprised of photographs, videos, and surveys of 100 women between the ages of 19 and 95, this project merges art and sociology, and explores new sensorial and emotional experiences in an attempt to discover affinities and differences among participants, separating itself from the bias and stereotypes present in hierarchical relationships. Common Place challenges conventional methods of portraiture and proposes new social constructs.
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| Video Installation from Common Place | Photograph by Christopher Cunningham |
Adriana Ospina, AMA's education coordinator, says of the relationship between housekeepers and their employers in Latin America: "It can very well be a love-hate relationship, the housekeeper can know everything about the housewife, but she needs to respect their boundaries. The exhibit examines the domestic and social dynamic behind the relationship and it opens up a can of worms."
Bio
Ruby Rumié was born in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Since 2005, she has lived and worked between Cartagena de Indias, and Santiago, Chile. She studied painting, drawing, and sculpture at The School of Fine Arts in Cartagena, David Mansur Academy in Bogota, and has participated in numerous workshops with artists such as: Maria Teresa Hincapié, Eugenio Dittborn, Fabian Rendón, and Jean Pierre Accoult. From 1989 to 1996, she worked using a hyper-realistic painting technique to portray portraits of the native people of Cartagena de Indias. After breaking away from the Academy, she started to work with a clear focus on social and territorial heritage, during which she questioned the commitment of the artist to society.
Her most recent exhibitions include, “Wholesale and Detail”, which addresses the issue of intangible memory through El Cardonal Market in Valparaiso (2009), as a landmark of jobs threatened by the presence of modern hypermarkets. “Gestemani: subject/ object”, a multimedia project about a neighborhood being displaced by real estate development (2003- 2008), exhibited in The Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, The Animal Gallery in Santiago, and The Affordable Art fair in New York. “The Real Things” exhibited within the framework of new curatorial projects of the Caribbean region for the Ministry of Culture, curated by Néstor Martinez Celis.
Since 1995, she has made multiple posters and prints such as the book, “The Visit”, with serigraphs from 15 Colombian artists, “The Last Letter to a Kidnapped Man”, with 1000 copies for the Boehringer Ingelheim company, the Centennial Commemorative poster “The Gift”, for the Mayor of Cartagena, and finally the poster “The Short Circuit “made for the Institute of Cultural Heritage, to celebrate the festival of the independence of Cartagena de Indias.
As a teacher she has carried out workshops and diploma courses with institutions such as the Banco de la República and the university Jorge Tadeo Lozano. She recently participated as a teacher in one of three cultural initiatives for social entrepreneurship in the city of Cartagena, created by The American Development Laboratory of the Technological University of Bolivar.
