Mira Bernabeu. Panorama Vocacional 2001-2013

Panorama Vocacional 2001-2013. Mira Bernabeu. 04.04.14_25.05.14

 

An artist with an extensive career path, he started his work at the end of the 90s after studying fine art and psychology. His investigations have at their backbone the question of the spectator and their motivations, through which he embeds an analysis of the social, economic, cultural and political situation of our time. Spectator and spectacle, individual and society, constitute the binaries which underpin his investigations.

Panoramas 2001-2013 introduces for the first time three projects of the artist which reveal different modes that offer happiness and well-being in our time. Each one of the projects is limited to a determined geographical context and a different professional field, preferring in this case the mode of documentary photography, and constituting a break-away from the other work of the artist in which staging is predominant. However, in the work of Mira Bernabéu, the boundaries between staged photography and natural photography are always being obscured.

Chronologically, the first of the projects is Panorama de Rehabilitación Nueva York 2001. 2001-2004. The work is based on the documentation of places in New York where events occur that help the physical and mental development of the human being. For this project Mira Bernabéu investigated the “stage” in which develops the “society of the spectacle” such as is defined by the artist himself.

73 photographs make up this work that have as the protagonist the places and main actors of those spontaneous happenings which pose queries to medical professionals, sport, religion, divination, minerals, smells, meditation or sex, and remind us of this loss of definition between the real and theatrical. The artistic work concludes by condemning that which is presented as panacea to extend and improve our lives, as no more than another performance, in which we are, unconsciously, another actor.

Mira Bernabeu takes up this theme with Panorama Vocacional. 360º. 2008-2009. Serie Mise en Scène XII. It is also a project with a documentary character centred in the Jesuit Community of the Palacio Ducal de Gandía and raises in this case a reflection around the fields of religious spirituality and its protagonists. The project was developed in four phases: in the first place, the realisation of a conversation/personal interview with each of the Jesuit participants; in the second place, the realisation of two individual portraits of each one of them; one in the place of the Palace or residence that he most liked, and another in the place that least attracted him; in the third place, he carried out an architectural photo tour of the whole space, the palace and residence; and finally, the fourth phase consisted of the realisation of a group portrait of most of the Jesuits that voluntarily decided to participate. This project comes to relate to the previous Panorama since it ends in another promise of welfare for the human being, in this case religious, and in both spiritual.

In 2013, the artist will complete this triptych with Panorama de Bienes y Servicios. Hospital de Denia. 2013-2013. Serie Mise en Scène XIII in which his investigations centre on the world of medicine and health, having as it´s protagonist the Hospital of Denia. For this project Mira Bernabéu repeatedly visited the hospital and tried to document both the medical professionals just as what was inside; the waiting rooms, operating theatres, litter bins etc. Like in the preceding Panoramas, the ´patient´ is absent from the scene, and is mentioned in the staging generated around you. From this project arises another longing for happiness and well-being, in this case covered by science and medicine.

That it is not even necessary to deliberately create a scene and distribute scripts; reality imposes it. We must ask ourselves -who is the director? The three projects raise therefore a work with an anthropological focus in which Mira Bernabéu enables us to reimagine the everyday through a sublime dramatization of everyday life.