This manuscript from Johanna Calle (b. 1965), which contains notes, quotes, references, illustrations, and associations, is an important tool that the artist uses in her work. It also sheds light on the process she followed in the creation of the series Fardos y Perspectivas [Packages and Perspectives], produced in 2006.
These three pages from the Calle’s handwritten notebook refer specifically to certain conceptual and formal aspects of the work Fardos y Perspectivas. In them, Calle uses a variety of formal strategies—flattened cages and “drawings of transparent volumes” created with words—to speak out silently but forcefully against enclosures, the overcrowding of animals in pens, and the imposition of any kind of power on weaker beings. These pages contain revealing notes that indicate the close thematic links between this series and her other recent works, such as Obra Negra [Black Work] (2007-20008), Suburbia (2008), Barrios [Neighborhoods] (2009), and Zubcero [Subzero] (2009). They also show that the development of these works contains the seeds of an extensive, ambitious volume of work that she approaches from different angles, the emergence of informal neighborhoods, and precarious dwellings.
In addition to sharing her thoughts on two specific series and providing references that presage the production of future series, Calle’s manuscript includes a global discussion on her artistic production and her way of working. The manuscript also includes press cuttings about actual events, notes on works produced by great exponents of western art that are related to her field of research, such as Celdas [Cells] by Louise Bourgeois, and references to literary works such as L’Espece Humaine [The Human Species] by Robert Antelme. The notebook pages reveal the artist’s profound interest in addressing real, extremely complicated problems with no apparent solutions from the perspective of the multiple possibilities that drawing offers, creating small scale, impeccably rendered works that deal with breaking, implosion, or the alteration of rigid structures.
For more information of this manuscript, see the essay “Variaciones políticas del trazo, dibujos de Johanna Calle” [Political Variations of the Line: Drawings by Johanna Calle] (see doc. # 1091171) by Virginia Pérez-Ratton (b. 1950).