'If The Mountain Is Burning, Let It Burn' is an exhibition of new photographic and recent video work that draws from Nicholson’s archive of over two hundred photographs of Colombia, her birthplace—Bogotá, and her life in Australia.
Moving between analogue and digital methods, and marking Nicholson's first time working in photography, If The Mountain Is Burning, Let It Burn sees the artist re-examining and deconstructing the archive anew. The exhibition includes a series of large-scale photographs and an installation of The Deep Rivers Say it Slowly (2023), a video which formally borrows from the photographic slideshow.
Nicholson arrives at an image by employing layered analogue, digital, and cameraless technologies. In the developing process of analogue photography, the image appears slowly and can rapidly disappear again through overexposure. The varied yet rhythmic nature of her photographs and videos reflects her interest in the workings of memory. Focused on an attempt to catch the image, Nicholson has produced a photographic series that obscures and fractures the image further.
The exhibition takes its title from the song Que Se Quema El Monte [That The Mountain Is Burning] (2006) by the renowned Colombian bullerengue musician Etelvina Maldonado. Nicholson's translation is comparatively devastating and instructive and evokes the emotional resonances of the archive, rather than the search for essential truths. If The Mountain Is Burning, Let It Burn gestures towards a moment of regeneration, a state of perpetuity, and a boiling point.
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The 2023-24 UTS Artist in Residence Program has been developed with support from academic research partners Dr Cherine Fahd and Dr Marivic Wyndham and the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Built Environment.
Banner image: Claudia Nicholson. Untitled 1 (2024). Archival Pigment Print. Courtesy the artist. © Claudia Nicholson 2024.
Related event
Exhibition Opening: If The Mountain Is Burning, Let It Burn
Tuesday 30 July
6pm - 8pm
Join us to celebrate the opening of If The Mountain Is Burning, Let It Burn, by Claudia Nicholson.
Related event
In Conversation: Claudia Nicholson
Saturday 12 October
2pm - 4pm
Join artist Claudia Nicholson in conversation with Ivan Muñiz Reed, Senior Curator, Powerhouse.