MADRID.- The Han Nefkens Foundation is presenting a solo exhibition by Peruvian artist Maya Watanabe (Lima, 1983). Following the announcement of ARCOmadrid’s 2019 country of honour, the Han Nefkens Foundation – ARCOmadrid Video Art Award 2018 focussed on emerging artists of Peruvian origin or nationality with an international perspective.

During ARCOmadrid 2018, Maya Watanabe was awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation - ARCOmadrid Video Art Award Award to support the production of her latest video artwork Liminal, which was premiered at La Casa Encendida, coinciding with ARCOmadrid 2019. Following on from the ARCOmadrid premiere, in 2019 the work will also be presented at Wuzhen Contemporary Art Exhibition (China), at the Museo de Arte de Lima- MALI (Peru), at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito-CAC (Ecuador), and at Anozero – Coimbra Biennial of Contemporary Art (Portugal).

Maya Watanabe’s Liminal explores questions on the multitude of responses to grieving, identifying and representing, forming both a private and political point of view. Maya Watanabe was unanimously chosen by the jury for her ability to develop complex issues in a profound and coherent manner in addition to her focused and meticulous use of advanced technologies. Throughout the past four years, the artist has worked on a number of hugely ambitious projects, including Earthquakes at the Kyoto Art Center (2017) and Sceneries at the Palais de Tokyo during The Festival Do Disturb (2015), both of which reflected a personal and innovative response to identity and language.

The Han Nefkens Foundation – ARCOmadrid Award aims to provide a means for increasing contemporary artistic production in the field of video art. Maya Watanabe received a €15,000 fund to produce Liminal. The artwork responds to the 6,000 yet to be excavated mass graves and more than 16,000 people still missing from Peru's internal armed conflict, whom today - almost 20 years after the official end of the genocide - are still waiting to be identified.

In order to grieve, it is important to find the remains of the disappeared person. Grieving is not only a personal experience of loss and pain, but also a means of conveying the suffering of others, and acknowledging that a person's life and death matter. Clandestine graves and enforced disappearances intervene as a political tool not only to determine whose lives are eliminable, but also to highlight who can be silenced and who cannot.

Once exhumed, human remains enter a place of limbo between their previously ‘disappeared’ status and the submission of forensic analysis which will then restore identity, determine legally how that person died and thus confer a possibility of mourning. Liminal is located within that state, on the threshold of the recognisable and the representable, between being a non-subject and being recognised as a subject.

The video is produced by the Han Nefkens Foundation and supported by Mondriaan Fonds. With the collaboration of EFE – Peruvian Specialised Forensic Team – and the Peruvian General Directorate for the Search of Missing Persons.

Born in Lima in 1983, Maya Watanabe is based between Amsterdam and Madrid. She works mainly with video installations. Her work has been exhibited at: Palais de Tokyo, Matadero Madrid, the Kadist Art Foundation SF, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima, and the Kyoto Art Center among others. She has been featured in festivals like Videobrasil, LOOP, FILE, Transitio_MX, Madrid Abierto, Havana Film Festival, and Beijing Biennale. She has also collaborated as a set designer and audiovisual art director for theatre plays performed in Peru, Spain, Austria and Italy.