Carlos Garaicoa: El Cuarto Oscuro/The Dark Room

The installation El cuarto oscuro/The Dark Room by Carlos Garaicoa (b. 1967, Cuba) works as a personal review of the daily news.

Originally conceived in 2006 as a form of work-in-progress, it took as its starting point a selection of images found in local newspapers. An atypical reading was proposed, while fresh stories and associations arose from this very selection. After gathering newspapers from different countries for several years, in 2010 the work was finished and exhibited for the first time at the Shanghai Biennial.Newspaper pages were altered by the use of India ink, all the written information was wiped out and only pictures evoking specific themes and motives remained.

Violence, architecture, hands, stock market charts, crowds or Presidents’ noses are some of the contents and images that fill this database, one that is accessible to all. A pictorial, surreal and almost censoring intervention turns out to be a “reliable” document that guarantees its legitimacy by starting from the actual news of a specific day. The Dark Room makes reference on the one hand to my interest in live photography and archives, on the other hand to control and manipulation of information and news in contemporary societies. They are images which, thanks to the magic of photography or the event that precedes any news, come to light for the first time – or stay definitely hidden.

“My idea is to create an installation with very comfortable seats, where visitors can sit and read the Images of the World. It should be a very quiet reading room, with a coffee machine and sofas and benches, and the whole display of these Black Newspapers… I think reading the news and selecting it shows the way I’ve been establishing distance from many things.
In a way, the process of selecting the final images maintains my relation with the world in a very “figurative”, sensible way.
The installation will work as a personal and surreal news review. New stories and associations will appear to the eyes of the reader, based on this personal selection of mine. It’s in fact a true document, as it starts from the actual news from a given day, but at the same time it’s a censored, unrealistic version. It displays the vision of a single human being who, for one day, is entitled to control the information that a whole country receives.” States the artist.