Your name
Enrique Pezo Gómez
Place of birth
Iquitos, Peru
Place where you live now
Madrid, Spain
3 words to describe you
Speculation, river, rhizome
Why do you take pictures?
My link with the photographic image originates from a basic need for communication. I use language through visual codes in order to extend an opinion on contemporary issues. G. Agamben said that the contemporary is not only about keeping our gaze fixed on the darkness of the times, but also to act, to avoid being condescending about our current context. To transit, precisely, the light and the shadow. To take a position -political, social- on what we want to say in images. Deconstructing discourses, which is nothing more than gathering as many points of view as possible, in order to obtain our own opinion from the peripheries of official history.
Where do you get your inspiration?
My work is based on the stories that are not told and the images that have not been seen. That is, to review the traditional historiography on territories where the extractivist system and the colonial heritage -such as the Amazon- operate.
Who are your influences?
As a cultural subject I embrace a hybridization of influences. My family memory, anthropological studies, philosophy and the Amazonian cosmovision, to mention a few. I become aware of the configuration of my subjectivity, I am interested in reflecting on them, rethinking their performance intrinsic to my link with the image. It is undeniable to assume ourselves as colonized subjects, language in itself already fulfills an important influence. I like to think of the photographic image as a dialectical device, that of tensing western influences and the Amazonian cosmovision.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
The territory I inhabit. The determination of a theme crosses gender, class and skin color. I need to be aware of this in order to find the way to say what I think. Each one proposes ideas based on what he/she knows, the ideas are related to the author and his/her own subjectivities responding to a social and cultural context. The themes we approach are linked to other languages, to our interests and questions, and how these add up to possible themes to be analyzed and investigated.
What impact would you like your art to have?
The impact is achieved collectively. The articulation of the artistic and research work with other academic disciplines enables a greater effect. For this, it is essential that there is coherence between the work and from where we enunciate ourselves. Positioning a discourse that dialogues with other artists from the counter-narrative.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
Works that question hegemony, stereotypes and fascist discourses. Works that exist as a kind of perforator of conventions, showing how information is performative in our environment, through authors who seek a constant movement to lose stereotyped schemes.
Is there anything you want to add?
We need other kinds of stories, we often lose track of what really matters. Donna Haraway says that learning to tell the "other" story leads us to different logics of language, it helps us to narrate in a different way from the way the media circulate information. If we only hear the story from the official state, "the only story" based on stereotypes and prejudices, we run the risk of falling into a greater indifference. Although the photographic image is a device of subjectivity, it provides a critical analysis due to the diversity of points of view.
