The artist and director from Barcelona has been experimenting with the medium of photography for a few years through various series and above all a memorial work, original and full of sensitivity.
Julieta Averbuj’s work is about experimentation, introspection, and remembrance.
This former film director graduated from the University of Film in Buenos Aires and worked as an assistant director and producer in Peru, New York, and Spain.
Today she works as a programmer in a private cultural space in the center of Barcelona. Although her career mainly embraces the world of cinema, Julieta Averbuj also explores the photographic medium.
Her work is complemented by commissions, such as her series for (Optical) Metalcraft, a brand of glasses relaunched in 2017 by the founder’s grandson after more than thirty years of absence. Here she creates subtle optical effects through double exposures and reflections found in the city, which characterize the lines of the brand.
2022 marked an important milestone in her life, with the release of her first photobook, El Juego de la Madalena, which explores memories, following the death of her father. “I received a phone call in December 2017 and was told that my father had died. In the days that followed, I looked very closely at the family albums at his home in Buenos Aires. I then felt the need to make a book to honor him, because that was the object by which he also expressed himself.”
Memory work
The photographer invites the reader to “look from near and far, touch it, look for combinations and find connections.” But also to “play” with the sixty pages, because the title of the book refers to a game invented by her father.
The book, published by Fuego Books and designed by the design studio Underbau, is composed of a cover with cut-out of 4 windows, supplied with a booklet sewn with Singer stitching.
The vellum texture of photographic paper and the effects of its physical degradation therefore play an important role. These are fragments of archival images from the family album that create abstract, close-up patterns and take on different meanings as the pages are played.
A vibrant tribute to her father, who probes “the construction of memories and memory as a changing journey full of detours.”
In parallel, she created collages to open the field to new perspectives, which she presented in “interactive” installations during her first exhibition.
Today, Julieta Averbuj continues to explore the facets of her approach and to exhibit her cinematographic and photographic work in international festivals and galleries.
Barcelona – Spain
https://www.instagram.com/julietaaverbuj/
Nathalie Dassa