In the series "Fukushima" (2016), Nathalie Rey deals with the nuclear disaster caused by the earthquake and tsunami of Tōhoku on March 11, 2011 in Japan. The 13 drawings incorporate stuffed animals that belonged to Rey’s sisters when they were little, which accentuate the magnitude of the tragedy by introducing the contrast of human vulnerability. She introduces the concept of innocence, fragility and helplessness before the force of nature and the nuclear accident, but also in relation to how the radioactive leakage was treated informatively based on minimizing its effects, while also showing how vulnerable and manipulable we are in relation to the media. By introducing the idea of fragility, the artist faces the tragedy of human history from the only way that is bearable for her, namely innocence, which nevertheless rises here as a resilient and denouncing look at the state of things, decisions made and how they are managed and communicated.

Fukushima

When I was 20, I went to study on an American campus near Chicago. During the first few weeks, I experienced a sharp feeling of strangeness which reason I could not understand. And then all of a sudden I saw what I had in front of my eyes from the start or, to be more exact, what had disappeared from my visual and sound field since my arrival; on this campus of 50000 students, there were no children.
This memory came back to me during the confinement; on the occasion of my rare outings, I experienced a disconcerting lack from the absence of children in the city (much more striking to me than the absence of traffic for example) which I interpreted as the sign of a deeply abnormal situation, comparable to the sudden stop of the heckling of nature in front of danger.
Towards the end of the confinement and to this day, I sporadically go back to work in my studio in Hospitalet. On the way between the metro and the studio there is a nursery school, the one in the photo, empty since March 13. Looks like a wasteland.
In the wake of the legend of the Pied Piper by Hamelin, the work “Le Solitaire” is a tale about the human condition, about the invisible emotional links that weave between the members of a society, about the fragility of cities as a model of conviviality, on the artifice of urban agitation, on loneliness.
"The Loner" can be each of us condemned to a new kind of isolation in the once again bustling city. It is also a game which consists in removing all the marbles from the checkerboard until the last one.

Barcelona, May 7 2020


Le Solitaire

This photographic project belongs to a broader proposal that will include an installation.
After the lockdown and several residencies in rural areas, I became interested in environmental issues, through two main axes, namely plastic pollution - with Donovan Hohn's bestseller Moby Duck (2011) as a starting point - and the management of natural resources - particularly inspired by the reflections of Jared Diamond in his essay Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed (2005).
Hence the Solid Waste project on the issue of the production and treatment of household waste.
Regarding the photographic proposal, I intend to create a series of still lives, in the Morandi style, with plastic bottles that I collect after consuming their content or that I find on the street. Contrary to what the title of the work might suggest (which corresponds to the official terminology to designate household waste), the still lives are imbued with an ethereal atmosphere, immersed in light, as if it were a mirage or a divine apparition. This contrast between the seriousness of the problem and the formal treatment, characterized by fragility and aspiration to certain perfection, is one of my favorite resources.


Solid waste

“Liquidació per tancament” [Clearance sale] (2021), is a set of works with immersive profile in relation to the Borgian clichés such as the disruption of the concepts of space and time, reality and fiction, violence and innocence, or order and chaos. Rey offers us a labyrinthine set of premonitory signs that anticipate the apocalypse.
The project arises from a conversation with the artist Enric Maurí, who tells her about some automaton bears in a shop window, and the image in the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia a couple of days later of the same store with the sign “Clearance sale”. It occurs then to Rey to incorporate the automaton into her work, but in the end it is not possible to get them because the store is not closing down and the photograph happens not to be current. The project originates in this mismatch.
Then arises the possibility of getting a small teddy bear in another store. Rey documents the conversations on Whatsapp and the images exchanged with Maurí about the store with the automaton bears and the search for the little stuffed animal, along with comments on other artistic works they share and the day to day routine. From there, the project expands randomly and providentially, and finally Rey decides to complete it with a series of photographs of the automaton, taken by Ricardo Portero; of stores that closed down during the pandemic, with the collaboration of José Luis Tercero; and an apocalyptic Christmas tale, which she specifically ordered to the writer Marcelo Laugelli. The literary typology of the story reinforces the anticipatory and visionary character of the fictional events it narrates, closely related to popular culture and myths and legends.
It is worth noting that the way this project has been generated is usual in Nathalie’s work; although she undertakes her own searches, she often incorporates objects, images and situations that friends, artists or not, share with her because they think they may be of interest to her. These elements accumulate and sometimes generate connections or contrasts - a click – as she says, which propel the articulation of a new project.


Liquidació per tancament [Clearance sale]

The systematization of trade, which occurred early in the evolution of human societies, has led to the creation of specific places able to handle these complex exchanges: the cities. But as soon as they appeared, they had to face the inevitable threat that hangs over any structure that claims to accumulate wealth and power. Thus, the history of cities is marked by looting, the construction of protective walls, the confinement of populations during lengthy months of siege, curfews, bombardments, destruction.
"State of siege" refers in a roundabout and ironic way to this violence absolutely inseparable from the existence of urban agglomerations and is based on the very recent experience of confinement of the population on a global scale linked to the covid pandemic. Among all the consequences that confinement have had on the urban environment, Rey, in the continuity of previous work, was interested in the phenomenon of reappropriation by nature of built spaces and in particular the incongruous incursions of wild animals into cities deserted by their inhabitants. With the humor that characterizes some of her works, Rey turns these isolated and anecdotal incidents into massive and widespread phenomena.
By inverting the terms of the current situation of a nature irreversibly threatened by human activity in the form of some kind of science fiction parable, Rey invites us to reflect on the future of cities in terms of sustainable development.


State of siege

The Reconstruction project is a reflection on the current moment and the paradigm shift it entails. A procedural and collaborative approach with an experimental phase distended in time that does not take anything for granted beforehand.
Nathalie Rey changes the look towards anything that her work encompasses: the audience, her experience (on site or virtual), the new concepts of distance and closeness, the reinvention of objects and memories, as well as virtual / invented / inherited / real / reinterpreted spaces.
Such complete paradigm shift is what we experience today, inside and outside of art. We re-adapt and get used to it, a new reality startles us for a while, until after a few months, it disappears submerged in habit.
In Reconstruction the work also mutates and travels; we observe its coexistence in different galleries and environments, although always through a virtual filter. Almost tracing a mapping of new conventions of how to make art travel, as a parallel to our new conditions of displacement.
Change as a fixed value, but now a little different. Let’s imagine together open and flexible models that lead us to resilience; this Reconstruction seeks a model that adapts to the unpredictable.
The participation of multiple spaces in the city, with different visions and influences in the project is also an indicative factor of the new ways of creating that we will need to develop. In an uncertain future, co-creation and collaboration will be essential.
Nathalie's work is often determined by its procedural aspect, which gives to it a dimension that transcends the conceptual work and the installation. From her conception, through her research and experimentation, her work takes multidimensional perspectives and profiles that address intimate yet universal themes. Taking references from a childhood with which we all identify in one way or another, to the reinvention of objects that surround us, endowing them with a complexity of meaning.
This curatorial text is written from the expectation; understanding that the potential of transformation of the work (also unpredictable) depends on the spontaneous participation of the audience from an adaptable and fickle perspective. Let’s direct our gaze towards what is to come, instead of towards what has been. Let’s start.

Sara Catalán
June 2020


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Nathalie Rey