Contact
News
Upcoming / Archive

Represented

Raul Ortega Ayala

Portfolio

Raul Ortega Ayala’s (1973, Mexico) work is the result of immersions into different environments, which he purposefully seeks to experience through research or observation for an extended period of time. Ortega Ayala approaches each subject matter using a certain methodology, predominantly an ethnographic approach (as a participant observer). He approaches a context with as little predetermined knowledge of its ‘craft’ as possible and seeks to learn it via taking employment and training in the field in question, or by means of research. At AKINCI Ortega Ayala has shown a replica of Pieter Brueghel’s (1563) Babel Tower he made with fat in order to constitute a coherent metaphor of our times. In general the Tower of Bable can function as the eternal ruin, symbolizing  development, human hubris and decay all at once. The Tower of Bable built of fat can be seen as a metaphor of transformation. In Ruins recycled Ortega Ayala presented his new video work of an architect, a historian and an archaeologist. E.g. a historian talking in front of a site of something that happened in that spot, an archaeologist speaking in front of a building about another building that used to be in that place and a person walking the artist around a house talking about people he or she knew…

Raul Ortega Ayala studied at the Glasgow School of Arts and at the Hunter College in New York. He also studied Philosophy and Visual Arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Ortega Ayala’s projects have been shown worldwide: 2008/9 Una Etnografia sobre la Jardinaería’, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City; 2010 a project at Kowalsky Gallery, DACS, London curated by Gilane Tawadros, selected by Francis Alÿs. His recent solo show was at Stroom The Hague, Netherlands (2010). Raul Ortega Ayala is represented by Rockeby, London.