Filmed by Davi Geiger, soundtrack with excerpts from the bolero La Virgen Negra (1965), by Los Chaynas. Anna Bella Geiger plays semantic games between image and word using the format of South America and reflects on stereotypes attributed to Latin American culture. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist (2018), the artist states, “I circled back to my linguistic, phonetic questions and anthropomorphized the silhouette of Latin America as an Amulet, as a Mulata (mulatto woman) and a Muleta (crutch). I associated them phonetically and drew them on paper. I also made a video about it, Elementary Maps III […]. Once, I visited a place where they sold vinyl records wrapped in plastic. I read the title of one of them, La Virgen Negra, a bolero, and I bought it. I listened to the song and the very next day I made the video Elementary Maps III, where all I had to do was combine sound and image. I believe in epiphanies. […] La Virgen Negra is a bolero sung by a woman, where she asks the Black Virgin for help. She speaks like the mythologies that signify a Latin America, asking for help, alms, assistance for all of us, always in a state of dependency, lack of self-esteem. I don’t think Brazil is like that.”
Filmed by Davi Geiger, soundtrack with excerpts from the bolero La Virgen Negra (1965), by Los Chaynas. Anna Bella Geiger plays semantic games between image and word using the format of South America and reflects on stereotypes attributed to Latin American culture. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist (2018), the artist states, “I circled back to my linguistic, phonetic questions and anthropomorphized the silhouette of Latin America as an Amulet, as a Mulata (mulatto woman) and a Muleta (crutch). I associated them phonetically and drew them on paper. I also made a video about it, Elementary Maps III […]. Once, I visited a place where they sold vinyl records wrapped in plastic. I read the title of one of them, La Virgen Negra, a bolero, and I bought it. I listened to the song and the very next day I made the video Elementary Maps III, where all I had to do was combine sound and image. I believe in epiphanies. […] La Virgen Negra is a bolero sung by a woman, where she asks the Black Virgin for help. She speaks like the mythologies that signify a Latin America, asking for help, alms, assistance for all of us, always in a state of dependency, lack of self-esteem. I don’t think Brazil is like that.”