Bio
Alcántara was born in Venezuela and has been living and working in NYC since 1999. Her multidisciplinary practice includes photography, video, performance, installation and writing. With a strong focus on conceptual photography, predominantly staged self-portraits, her work presents narratives that challenge the status quo of the quotidien, exposing layers of complexity seemingly invisible to the eye. Her language explores dichotomies of the optimistic and the cynical, the comedic and the pensive, the forbidden and the compliant, the absurd and the spiritual. Through her installations and performance works, Alcántara is able to engage with the audience herself, blurring the lines of the intimate and the public.
“My work is a deep look at the female dilemma. Women who want to be perfect, women who want to be beautiful, have the perfect home, do what they are supposed to do and yet go through all of this gut wrenching trauma because that perfection is impossible and we are never actually able to please all of those who we are supposed to please. It is also about self realization and the process of letting go and reinvention. This is the story of womanhood. The images capture a feeling of wanting to come into ourselves and our power as women. I speak specifically to the female gaze. My staged photography has elements of snapshot aesthetic, however, placement and condition of every item combined with my persona is curated to underscore a theme. “ Alcántara completed a Bachelor in Arts at Bard College and NYU, and a Master of Fine Arts from Bard College/ICP. Lara Alcántara Lansberg is also a mother of two. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.
.jpg)
Statement
Bloom; to bloom. The act of blooming. I feel that as an artist and a woman, I am in a perennial blooming pattern. As every year passes, every year around the sun, not only mine but those of my children, I feel like I am in constant blooming. I have become a soul of blooming, changing, reassessing, restructuring, growing, seeding, pruning and nurturing myself. These photographs all are part of this process. " Trekking " was a moment in my life a year ago where I saw myself in the need to rebaptize my soul. I went to the ocean and brought flowers and had the oceans waters and the sun rising, to set my old self free and open space for my new self which was screaming to come out. On being was a couple of months after that where I saw my life in chapters, flying all over my mind, triggering moments and using me to listen to my inner voice, ending with " Head in the clouds" . where I understood that as humans we are temperamental as clouds. Depending on the day, we either rain, hail or snow. When this matter falls into the earth and we connect with our inner Gaia, that matter evaporates and constructs a new cloud, of different shape and form but reorganized with the same matter. Our childhood, our traumas and our lives journey. I document my life more than make photographs. these are moments that I am going through. From a woman's perspective. I am always blooming.
