Popland I

About

Nana del Riego is a photographer born in 1996 in Havana, Cuba. Educated at the National Academy of Fine Arts San Alejandro and the University of Fine with distinction in Cuba, she is now living in Mexico City. Although trained as a painter, she has transitioned into the field of digital photographer, preferring the immediacy and the “reality” that echoes in line with current times–where photography appears as king of social networks, advertisements, magazines, tabloids, etc.

Influenced by the aesthetics of Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz, and David LaChapelle, she delves into the use and abuse of the female image and the body as an object of exploration; specifically, the female body as a metaphor for modernity. Her work is strongly inspired by the aesthetics of “good” living flaunted by advertisements, magazines, and social media, and the subsequent struggle to achieve it is made ironically evident in her photographs.

“It is obvious that in visual arts and more so in photography, there has been a use and abuse of the female image, mainly by women, who have traditionally focused on gender work, on the body as an object of exploration.  In my case, I prefer the female body because in it I recognize a metaphor for our modernity. A woman is undoubtedly the image representing modern times…an object of desire for men and of worship for women themselves. In advertising, social networks, media or basically any digital or real scenario, the woman is the image that seduces the masses, and thus becomes a product in itself. The aesthetics of my work are strongly inspired by the aesthetics of ‘good living’ that is constantly being sold to us; the aestheticising of everyday life that human beings promote based on their own lives or the lives they yearn to achieve is made ironically evident in my photographs. ‘The civilization of the spectacle,’ as Vargas Llosa would call it.” – Nana del Riego