© Bianca Salvo from the series 'The Contact Zone'

Bianca we discover your work through the graduates call of Blurring the Lines 2020. Your work was shortlisted published in the catalog among other talents. Can you tell me something about your history together connected to your project The Contact Zone?

Bianca Salvo (BS): I started working on this project at the end of 2018 when I officially enrolled in my MA in Plastic Art at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá. The project was presented for the first time in December 2019 and received a research scholarship from the Centre of Creation and Investigation of the same university. I moved from Milan to Bogotá in 2016, and since then, I had this idea that I wanted to create a project that explores the relationships between photography and colonialism. In the previous two years, I was deeply investigating the topic of space explorations and the role photographic images have had in the formation of collective imagery related to outer space. I guess The Contact Zone was born from the necessity to shift to another field of practical and theoretical exploration. It comes out from my desire to keep questioning the links between the formation of beliefs and representation processes.

© Bianca Salvo from the series 'The Contact Zone'

© Bianca Salvo from the series 'The Contact Zone'

© Bianca Salvo from the series 'The Contact Zone'

The Contact Zone links deeply to the "Other" 's reconfiguration, to research a link and a border that creates a limitation and a bond with something different to (or someone different to). Can you tell me something about this concept?

BS: At the very beginning, I was pretty much interested in investigating how XIX century photography influenced the representation of the so-called "Other," however, across the years, the series went under diverse transformations, changes and experimentations. I extend my research to travel literacy, illustration, and geography to understand their role in this process of reconfiguring the "Other." Then I bumped into professor Mary Louise Pratt's definition of the "zones of contact," which definitely gave the twist to my project. I started thinking about these spaces of colonial encounters in which individuals with different histories and geographies establish, among them, asymmetrical and permanent relationships. I felt motivated to develop a project that could determine these zones of contact's borders and shape. I started questioning myself about the very nature of this "contact," and I wanted the series to reflect this constant and unbalanced exchange with the unknown.

Your project is miscellaneous of images and objects. Why did you choose this narrative solution? How did you find the items photographed?

BS: The idea behind the project was precisely to break up and challenge somehow the established narrative behind the explorations toward the New World. To do this, I decided to work with a diverse combination of materials from video to archival footage and documents and finally staged photographs of reconstructed objects. In the series, I staged some of the very symbols of western’s conquest, such as the flag or the globe, intending to question them. I was interested in deconstructing their original purpose and restaging the unknown land journey and the contact with the unfamiliar from a domestic perspective. Staging objects and recording them through photography is a significant moment in my process of creation. I didn’t find the objects, but I created them using ordinary materials I recollect such as textiles, maps, plants, etc...

© Bianca Salvo from the series 'The Contact Zone'

In The Contact Zone there's an "Other" that is always unknown. In some images, it's touched, handled, dehumanized. In some other images, it's geography that determines the "Other". For you, what's the "Other"?

BS: Photography showed on many occasions the shape, the face, and the surface of the "Other," travel literacy and illustration did pretty much the same, always serving the necessities of the "western gaze." This way, an asymmetrical relationship with it has also been perpetuated in collective imagery. As you said, in the series, this so-called "Other" continually changes, and it is always unknown. I think the whole point of the series is taking a distance from one and univocal interpretation of what the "Other" is (or was). On the other side, I assume it was vital for western ideology to provide a specific definition of what the "Other" is, or was, to produce differentiated conceptions of itself and dominate the frightening idea of the unknown, the exotic, and the unfamiliar.

© Bianca Salvo from the series 'The Contact Zone'

© Bianca Salvo from the series 'The Contact Zone'

What postcolonialism signifies for you? And decolonization?

BS: I think these two terms are both matters of concern in recent days, not just for me as an artist but for collectivity in general. Today we talk a lot about decolonization; however, despite a different consciousness, I believe eradicating western ideology and western symbolism from images is a very complicated task. We still exist within a system of privilege and oppression.
When I was working on my previous project, exploring space explorations' fascinating imagery, I realized that media, including photography, have the power to erect and perpetuate ideologies and beliefs through time. The western world indeed managed to build an idea of supremacy and civilization using various tools through history, and I do not refer only to geopolitical strategies. The same happened when I was working on the series The Contact Zone. I understood how western societies had used power technologies such as maps, navigation diaries, and measurement tools to prevail and dominate the idea of the "unknown Other."
I guess decolonization for me means the withdrawal of collective imagery from established narratives and fixed imageries.

© Bianca Salvo from the series 'False Geographies'

Do you think that this research about the "Other" and the critical analysis of decolonisation can have a continuation?

BS: As I said, it is an issue of relevance if you take a look at the times we’re living in. Western society will always look for an “Other” to conquest, colonize, dominate and subject. For this reason, I believe the investigation, as well as, the critical analysis of the processes of decolonization will certainly have a continuation.

© Bianca Salvo from the series 'False Geographies'

Do you think that today, internet is colonising imagination and narrations?

BS: Yes, I believe it is and we are subjected to its influence everyday. We’re living under the empires of social media, images and information. The new processes of colonization are fast and very effective in producing convincing proofs of what we ignore. Still I think the internet is also a powerful tool that can be used, or rather it should be used, to decolonize imageries and established narratives.

© Bianca Salvo from the series 'False Geographies'

Can you give us some book titles related to the themes of your project?

BS: Imperial Eyes by Mary Louise Pratt, Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place edited by Eleanor M. Hight, Gary D. Sampson, América Imaginaria by Miguel Rojas, Anthropology & Photography edited by Elizabeth Edwards

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LINKS
Bianca Salvo
Blurring the Lines 2020