Each one with their own drawing of the past
Issue 1
Artist Volumes Series
Giancarlo Montes Santangelo
New Poetics Publishing
English
Edited by Cristina Velásquez and Nechama Winston
Text by Jan Rattia and Giancarlo Montes Santangelo
Softcover
Edition of 300
Signed
16 pages
170 x 230 mm
2023
ISSN 29815320
Giancarlo Montes Santangelo’s images bring together staged scenes involving his body against archival images, pulled from private photographic archives from Argentina and Puerto Rico. He makes collages, enlarges them as prints, and stages himself and others within the collages – a reiterative process until the final image is made. In other photographs, Montes Santangelo poses himself or friends in performative actions. His works consider ritual, pain, masculinity, and spirituality. Multiple, often competing narratives are drawn together in layers with physical collaging and ripping – tools implemented to highlight gaps between visual planes and the unseen. By “queering conventional photographic practices, Montes Santangelo depicts a multiplicity of experience, describing a narrative that maybe isn’t accessible through straight photographs. This way of looking embraces dichotomies and inconsistencies, which opens histories and makes space to contribute to them, creating pictures that don’t necessarily refer to the past but depend on fictional narratives to visualize an alternative future.
(Source: https://www.newpoeticsoflabor.com/artist-volumes/p/giancarlo-montes-santangelo)
About the Artist
Giancarlo Montes Santangelo (b.1996) makes photographs and collages that map structures of mythology, coloniality, and belonging to describe a world of becoming between the concrete and the speculative. His work is informed by his experience with catholic school and theology, decolonial and queer studies, and archival practices. In 2019, Giancarlo was invited to exhibit his photographs alongside Paul Mpagi Sepuya as part of the Whitney Biennial. In 2020, he published his first monograph, “Improvising Sight Lines” with Monolith Editions – a book that weaves together images and writing and is held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the MoMA. In 2023, he published “each one with their own drawing of the past” with New Poetics Publishing, an independent publishing house based between Bogotá and New York. Giancarlo has completed programs with Tangent Projects, TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image, Google, Washington Project for the Arts, the Fire Island Artist Residency, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Brooklyn Museum.
http://www.giancarlomontes.com/
(Source: https://www.giancarlomontes.com/about)
About the Publisher
New Poetics Publishing is an independent publishing house based between Bogotá and New York, founded by artists Nechama Winston and Cristina Velásquez. New Poetics Publishing is part of New Poetics of Labor, a research platform founded in 2017. New Poetics Publishing collaborates with emerging artists on contemporary and experimental approaches to photography in the book form. We disseminate diverse visual perspectives, narratives and aesthetics, seeking to feature underrepresented voices in the photographic discourse. Through photography we contribute to alternative modes of learning and thinking. New Poetics Publishing prioritizes producing high quality affordable books. Our approach to publishing allows us to work in close collaboration with artists from start to finish, with all design and editing done in-house. Production is done locally and by close friends.
https://www.newpoeticsoflabor.com/
(Source: https://www.newpoeticsoflabor.com/about-npp)
