“How can we recall the past without reediting the present? How can we move forward while understanding what we’re leaving behind? How can we give back dignity to precarious bodies?” These are questions that guide the curators of exhibition People Are Places, which puts forth a dozen of artist Enrique Ramírez’s works under the themes of displacement and the sea.

Born in Chile in 1979 during the Pinochet dictatorship, Ramírez evokes in many of his works the bodies of the “disappeared,” those killed by the regime and often thrown into the sea. In the absence of tombs and graves to grieve these lives cut short by terror, this body of water becomes a place of memory and mourning. The exhibition also includes many references to modern-day migration policies and issues, where the sea is a kind of limbo in which civil rights are nullified.

Through videos, images, sound, texts and objects of great visual and poetic strength, Enrique Ramírez explores these concerns. The artist, who is met with great international success, will namely be presenting a video titled Los durmientes (2014), a triple projection of monumental size that brings to light a troubling episode of the Chilean dictatorship, where some victims were thrown into the sea at great heights, bound to railway ties. The title, in Spanish, translates to both “sleepers” and “railway ties”.

Studying his works, we see in the fluctuation of the waves, and hear in the sighing of the wind, beings that seem to come from nowhere, in danger of disappearing, of being left disembodied and faceless. And yet the artist succeeds in conjuring up, in his own words, ‘millions of stars shining on the seabed,’ transforming the risk of shipwreck and loss into an image of hope and a place for humanity.

Accompanying exhibition Enrique Ramírez. People Are Places, this publication will be co-published by Galerie de l’UQAM (Montréal) and the École nationale supérieure de la photographie (Arles). In three languages (French, English and Spanish), it will include a comprehensive documentation of the Montréal exhibition, as well as the French iteration presented at the École nationale supérieure de la photographie in the summer of 2021 under the title Jardins migratoires. Readers will find essays by Marta Gili in conversation with Enrique Ramírez, Louise Déry on the concept of the missing image and Nelly Richard, a Chilean cultural theorist specialized in contemporary art during and after the Pinochet dictatorship. The launch is set to take place in 2022.

Enrique Ramírez was born in Santiago, Chile. He lives and works between Paris and Santiago. He studied popular music and cinema in Chile before joining the postgraduate master at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains (Tourcoing, France) in 2007. In 2013, he won the Prix des Amis du Palais de Tokyo (France) and, in 2014, the LOOP Fair Prize (Barcelona). He has since exposed in major venues such as Le Palais de Tokyo, Centre Pompidou, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton and Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire, France; IX International Biennial of Art, Bolivia; Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico; Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, Santiago, Chile; and Centro Cultural MATTA, Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2017, he participated in exhibition Viva Arte Viva for the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Christine Macel. In 2020, he was a finalist for the Marcel Duchamp Prize (Paris). This past summer, his exhibition Jardins migratoires at the École nationale supérieure de la photographie was part of the Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles program. Ramírez is represented by Galerie Michel Rein (Paris, Brussels) and Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago).

ENRIQUE RAMÍREZ: PEOPLE ARE PLACES

Curators: Marta Gili, Louise Déry
Dates: November 5 – December 18, 2021
Opening: Thursday, November 4, 2021, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Galerie de l’UQAM
Judith-Jasmin Pavilion, Room J-R120
1400 Berri, corner of Sainte-Catherine East, Montréal
Berri-UQAM Metro

Tuesday – Saturday, noon – 6 p.m.
Free admission