BAPHOTO PRESENTS WUNDERKRAMMER AND SPECIAL ROOMS

Being the fourth participation of this section at the fair, Wunderkrammer reaffirms its place with Hilario Artes, Letras & Oficios participation. Hilario gallery is specialized in heritage photography and ancient processes that will present a selection of the sixth catalogue, composed of ancient pieces and vernacular photographs ranging from daguerreotypes and ambrotypes to family albums of the early twentieth century.

On the other hand, under the curatorship of Florencia Portocarrero, Special Rooms section aims at international galleries invited to Baphot to exhibit around an specific exhibition proposal. This year, the BAphoto team invited four galleries to participate in a conversation between artists about biodiversity and conservation with which Brigitte Baptiste - a Colombian biologist who runs the Humboldt Institute in Bogotá and who received recognition in 2017 of the Prince Claus Fund - is revolutionizing the field of global ecology from Latin America. 

Baptiste affirms that the purity and virginity dogma has passed from the body to the earth. Thus, we often interact with nature with the intention of protecting it, fixing it and often controlling it; but never to seducing it. Starting from the fluidity of gender identity and the transformations to which we subject our bodies, Baptiste reminds us that the landscape is also unstable: the manifestation of forms of appropriation and significance of the territory by human beings, or even a reflection of how our passions and desires leave their mark on the world. Therefore, continues Baptiste, the change is inexorable and we must find other ways to relate to him. 

In addition, Baptiste highlights the adaptability, connectivity and diversity of life. For her, caring and protecting does not mean preserving. Now, like any utopian practice that embraces diversity, this new paradigm of care will involve conflicting dialogues between nature, public management, activism and corporate interests. Following this line, the section Special Rooms- Ecologies of Desire brings together a group of artists who, in an experimental way, use photography to account for the various layers and flows of desire -psychic, social, economic and political- that currently go through and they shape the Latin American landscape.

Curator Florencia Portocarrero (Lima, 1981) 

Researcher, writer and curator. She studied Clinical Psychology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, where she also received a Master's Degree in Theoretical Studies in Psychoanalysis. During 2012 and 2013 Portocarrero participated in the Curatorial Program of the "Appel Arts Center" in Amsterdam and in 2015 she completed the Master in Theory of Contemporary Art at the University of Goldsmiths in London. Portocarrero writes regularly in contemporary art magazines such as Artishock and Terremoto. In Lima, she is curator of the public program of AMIL Project and is co-founder of Bisagra, one of the few independent art spaces in the city. She has recently been awarded the "Curating Connections 2017/2018" scholarship awarded by the DAAD artists-in-Berlin Program.