What Does Dignity Mean for You? A New Solo Show by the Spanish Photographer Pau Usach Opens at the Notting Hill Incognito Art Gallery
The Spanish photographer Pau Usach, based in Valencia, embarked on a journey to explore the concept of Dignity; the meaning of it on an individual basis. A value that seems to exist in an uncomfortable shortage in the current times. However, Usach avoids the cliché of faces and expressions and concentrates on parts of the body and gestures. She achieves to point out the minute, but perhaps more important, aspects of our daily lives. How we behave and interact with ourselves and the others is the true activism rather than epic speeches to a well-fed audience and beautiful messages on Twitter. As, unfortunately, more and more scandals are being unearthed from Human Rights NGO’s, her work is more relevant than ever.
As the Historian and Art Critic, Manuel Garcia, comments:
The persons suggested, in the manner of the models of the Arts Schools of the Age of Enlightenment, let us see part of their faces, torsos, arms, fists, hands, backs, in an almost anonymous exercise of the apparent nakedness of the body. […] From this perspective, Usach manages to cohabit, in this work, words such as respect, love, honesty, optimism, courage, with details of the body such as a face, a hand and a look.
Usach responds to the following questions:
1. Why a project on Dignity? Thinking about dignity for oneself and encouraging others to think about it seems very interesting and possibly beneficial to all of us. I like to favour spaces where we put the good things of life in an important place. Sometimes I imagine that in life we are diving and we are entering streams of water and let ourselves be carried by them, that’s why I think we need to choose very well in what current we submerge ourselves. And Dignity is a good choice.
2. What does dignity mean to you? RESPECT and LOVE
3. In which way has changed what dignity means to you once you completed the project? Dignity is intrinsic to the HUMAN BEING, TO BE A PERSON, is above any ideology, thought … But as everything in life requires to be taken care of from the smallest detail because it can be harmed by ourselves or by others almost without realising it, making us believe that we do it with the best intentions.
Usach is interested in the every day, the behind close doors, when another reality might emerge. The brutal simplicity creates a platform to pause and meditate.
What Does Dignity Mean for You?
is a new solo show by Pau Usach and opens at the Notting Hill Incognito Art Gallery on the 26th of February until the end of the Spring. Visits can only be arranged via appointment. For more information please visit the website on www.IncognitoArt.Gallery or email to Lorenzo@IncognitoArt.Gallery
