The Lovers Table: Ondine Viñao

• [Dish] Tamarind chutney, eggs, fried chicken, swiss chard, a loaf of bread, apple. What would you do with these ingredients if you weren't allowed to eat them?

Give everything except the apple to those who are allowed to eat them, and turn the apple into a pipe.

• [Time] What do you remember that you wish you forgot? What had you forgotten that you wished you remember?

I am quite talented already at forgetting things I don’t want to remember. Not necessarily the healthiest coping mechanism but nonetheless one I possess. That being said, I often have very vivid and disturbing nightmares that I can recall clearly. There’s a few in particular that I haven’t been able to shake – I’m very frightened of the “deep sea” and creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean, and I’ve had many dreams in which I’m forced to interact with these Satanic, massive monster-fish. Tuna is still my favorite food though.

This “talent” goes both ways – my memory in general is not the best, so there is much I’d like to remember. I’ve recently tried hypnosis recordings aimed at recalling childhood memories, but so far they’ve been futile...

• [Format] Film, phone, super 8, screenshot, jpg, photobooth, screen recording, hd, 5d. Discuss in less than 100 words.

For the purpose of my response I’m going to disregard “super 8” - it’s the only tool mentioned that diverges from my answer.

Our generation is raised on the Internet. I believe an artist must subvert mass media’s polished aesthetics, content we consume on a daily basis via our screens, when making work in order to hold an audience’s attention. Accessibility is increasingly rare as art becomes its own echo chamber of conceptual lingo and aesthetic concerns, so it’s important to use a familiar “language” to communicate with a diverse public. There needs to be an entry point, the aforementioned tools serve as such.

• [Score] 3 songs: opening credits, love at first sight, battle scene.

Opening credits:
I Started a Joke - Bee Gees

Love at first sight:
I Wanna Be Yours - John Cooper Clarke

Battle scene:
Alexander Nevsky: The Battle On Ice - Prokofiev

• [Work] What are you bringing to the table?

I make videos that borrow from the aesthetics of Hollywood, yet deal with topics and utilize forms usually associated with the “fine art” world. And this mix is perhaps not so prevalent... Clearly, there are “art films” that deal with atypical subject matter and “video art” that places a strong emphasis on production value, but the way in which I approach the mix is a bit out of the norm. Not having an obvious frame of reference for the way in which one works means there are no formulas to follow, which does present challenges, but is also quite exciting. My work ends up siting rather uncomfortably at the intersection of film and video art - and I say uncomfortably since it doesn’t fully fit in the art world or the film world, it ends up being difficult to program in either environment… so I bring to the table something I consider to be new, a bit uncharted, work that is very much so specific to our time and resources.

BIO

Ondine Viñao (b. 1994) is an Argentine-American video installation artist from New York City. A graduate of New York University, Viñao studied between the Studio Art department at Steinhardt and the Film & Television department at Tisch. Viñao has exhibited work in the US and abroad, including a solo show at Rubber Factory in New York City, the inaugural show of ClearView.ltd in London, Labs New Artists exhibition at Red Hook Labs (Brooklyn, NY), and a two-artist show at The Goss-Michael Foundation (Dallas, TX.) Recent achievements include artist talks at Hauser & Wirth in NYC and Freunde Von Freunden in Berlin, the publishing of her first photo book with Ginny Projects, and a residency at Chandelier Creative’s Mermaid Ranch. Her work has been written about in publications such as ARTnews, Document Journal, Garage Magazine, Office Magazine, The Observer, BlackBook, New York Magazine and Jalouse.

Viñao’s practice is centered on subverting traditional gendered roles and addressing the toxicity of pervasive narratives/myths which become societal norms. Her work exists at the intersection of film and video, using the polished aesthetics of Hollywood film to engage a generation of viewers raised on the Internet and mass media. The digital age and its discontents are frequently explored through Viñao’s video projects as she negotiates the relationship between control and trauma. Additionally, Viñao employs “uncanny” elements in her practice, using tools such as SFX makeup, animation, or post-production manipulation. She is interested in how these techniques process trauma in addition to moving the viewer out of a “real” world and into a more phantasmagoric one, becoming sites for mediating the distortionary effects of pain and its effect on perception.