Capturing nightmares or the process of printing bad dreams
Encrypting dreams with light is not an ordinary activity, much less simple, trying to photograph what has happened in our psyche while we sleep was a task that Rosalba Bustamante set out to do.
For seven overwhelming weeks the photographer suffered from recurring nightmares. That nocturnal activity outlined a new challenge for her: to carry out a catharsis through images.
Based on this approach, she dedicated herself with determination for forty-nine continuous days, to pursue and capture iconographies. When she woke up each day, she took a random image that briefly described what had happened to her in her nocturnal activity.
Finding the photo that would match any of the representations that crossed her imagination while she slept became part of her daily work.
This is how, in this brief sample, the artist shares with us her representations of nightmares ,more mental than real and gives us a different spelling, destined to get away from prejudices. Which entails the apparently unreal relationship of capturing in an image, some fragment or segment of her delusions.
The photographer is reluctantly oriented to the sensory atmosphere. She presents dark, diluted spectral structures. Captures portraits that evoke personal situations with a high degree of intimacy. Builds original compositions that drink out from your subjective memory. She brings into play the symbols that constantly interrogate their own possibilities.
The aesthetics of the photographer is significant, based on the confusion she causes us, by showing the approximate images that build a frank narrative with her dreamt experiences.
This exhibition is outlined in a diaphanous way, in Rosalba Bustamante’s own words: ¨Catharsis represents a season in the cosmos of my nightmares. Catharsis is a door to the heart of my obsessions … ”
Rosa María Cortés González
