Lima 1966 · lives and works in Ghent
Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker
“Between the beauty of loss and the surface of things.” Philippe Van Cauteren, S.M.A.K.
Photographing is an act of paying attention to the world.
Represented by
Galleries
Her work is shown and sold through two galleries. For prices and available prints, contact them or Giannina directly.
- Cecilia Jaime Gallery Ghent, Belgium
- Studio Seine Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Biography
Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker was born in 1966 in Lima, on her father's family hacienda by the sea. Her grandfather, a keen amateur photographer, taught her where to rest her eye; her mother, a film director, gave her her first camera at thirteen.
She studied in Lima, then photography in Barcelona, and came to Belgium in 1992, where she trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. In 1995 the Bibliothèque nationale de France acquired ten of her self-portraits. From 2001 to 2010 she was the house photographer of Arts Centre Vooruit, photographing dance, theatre and music from inside the stage.
Her work moves between cultures, languages and memories. Layered, apparently damaged black-and-white images, with a tinge of colour, look for the balance between silence and the noise the past leaves behind. She has shown in Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, Ostend, Rotterdam, Paris, Lima, New York and Montreal, with residencies in Assisi, Aracena, Essaouira, Venice and Nevada.
Collections
In public collections
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris · House of Flanders, New York · S.M.A.K., Ghent · Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent · Province of East Flanders · Ayuntamiento de Barcelona · Usine C, Montreal.
Awards: Tokyo International Photo Awards 2020 (book, fine art), Urbanautica Awards 2023, The List (fine art photographers) 2018.
Words on the work
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“Between the beauty of loss and the surface of things.”
Philippe Van CauterenArtistic director, S.M.A.K. Ghent- About this text (NL / EN)
A letter to Giannina, first published in her book Un-there. Van Cauteren reads her photographs as membranes peeled from reality, more interested in the baseboard than in the wall, in the wrinkles than in the face.
Original text in Dutch, with an English excerpt.
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“She does not tell a story, she mutes moments and freezes gestures.”
Anna LuytenJournalist and author- About this text (NL / EN)
A long portrait of the artist, from the hacienda near Lima and her grandfather's camera to the darkroom in Ghent and the stage of Vooruit. On attention, intimacy and light at the hour between dog and wolf.
Original text in Dutch.
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“Her pictures ask from the viewer more than a quick look.”
Bram Van OostveldtProfessor, Leiden University / University of Amsterdam- About this text (NL / EN)
Three short essays: on light and the slow appearance of the image, on her dialogue with old master painting, and on the rice-paper patches of her later work, borrowed from the restoration of old paintings.
Original text in Dutch, with an English summary.
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“Landscapes and people on the border of light and darkness.”
John DevosCritic and curator, L'Oeil de la Photographie- About this text (EN)
Written for the solo exhibition We kept on dancing like it didn't matter: memory as a diary, the soldiers' boots of her Peruvian childhood, dancers of Meg Stuart's Damaged Goods set against the mountains of Peru and the desert of Morocco.
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“What is not shown matters more than what is shown.”
Frederic De MeyerEditor in chief, The Art Couch (rendered from the Dutch)- About this text (NL)
Two reviews, for the exhibitions at Cecilia Jaime Gallery and at the cultural centre of Hasselt: on how fragile memory shapes us, and on the silences behind the grain of her images.
Original texts in Dutch.
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“Photography as a strange imaginary prosthesis that makes the unattainable tangible.”
Stef Van BellingenWarp, contemporary art platform- About this text (NL / EN)
On the layered images that mix her own view with her grandfather's photographic archive, like the 'ghostly pictures' of the nineteenth century: a dialogue between presence and absence.
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“You have the talent to be physically invisible while doing your work.”
Barbara RaesFormer artistic director, Buda and Vooruit- About this text (EN)
On her book as a choreography of images, and on the way she photographs dancers: no posing, no hundreds of frames, waiting for the detail that strikes her.
Exhibitions
Latest and upcoming
Selected exhibitions