Since its opening, Sorondo Projects champions exploration of identity, representing a body of work from artists that shed light on the complexities of belonging, displacement, and cultural exchange. In the light of Miami being a portal between North, Central, South America, and beyond, Sorondo presents Symbols of Identity a tandem show featuring Venezuelan artists María Elena Pombo and Silvana Trevale. Both contribute to a “space-in-between” or a “contact- zone”* having chosen to evidence translocation and negotiation of space within their work.

Pombo and Trevale parallel in their application of auto-ethnographic research, site and off-site specific participation to yield a reiteration and translation of cultural memory hinting to national symbols and customs that still exist but are unavailable due to a physical or timebound distance.

It is difficult to define or encapsulate a unilateral definition of culture or identity within a country. At times, culture can be traced back to the influences from specific sources that are characteristic of a certain region or group of people that then society widely adopts, whether it be through popularity, a social phenomenon, or even, the imposition of an agenda, as was the case of the “criollista”** ideology during Juan Vicente Gomez’s dictatorship (1908-1935) where the lifestyle and customs of the Venezuelan plains or “llano” was romanticized and pushed as a unifying agent of national identity. From proverbs to the way of dressing, this lifestyle was especially interpreted through music giving way to symbols such as the Alma Llanera that went from a popular zarzuela to becoming an undeniable signifier of national character as it is known for today (Perera, 2009), and consciously, the title of Trevale’s photographic series from 2023.

This view of the idyllic “llano” lifestyle might not reflect the contemporary context of the people that live in the plains and that may (or may not) engage in agricultural practices with knowledge inherited from their once romanticized ancestors. However, it is the action of transmitting practices from different aspects, even art forms, such as the “joropo” music genre (also present in the plains of Colombia) that reconnect and revive a space. This resiliency of culture is what Trevale attempts to evidence with the photo series Alma Llanera.

In a similar way, Pombo aims to showcase the resiliency of culture through the memory of a place. By first delving into the aspects that compose a landmark; its history, composition, significance and physical characteristics, to then, reshape organic materials from the site aiming to recreate the connection that viewers have with a specific place and attempting to encapsulate an ephemeral moment taken out of its original context. One of Pombo’s selected locations is the salt evaporation ponds in Las Cumaraguas, state of Falcón. For the people of Las Cumaraguas these ponds could be considered an important inheritance of culture; from being a source of sustenance to shaping tradition and lifestyle (Sanchez, 2020). Pombo parallels this inheritance to the salt mines of Araya, state of Sucre where Margot Benacerraf’s film Araya (1959) and duo Yeny & Nans’ body of work Crystallization Symbolism-Araya (1984-1986) took place; both works evidencing perseverance in such arid and taxing location. In the gathering of these valuable outputs, there is a reimagination of the idea of territory relating to Foucault’s third principle of heterotopias; the juxtaposing of several spaces in a single real place or sites that are in themselves incompatible (Foucault and Miskowiec 1986, p25.), cultural value is reiterated in Pombo’s piece Yeni & Nan in the West (2024) when the ordinary material from the site (already endowed with national significance) is isolated and presented in a geographically distant context, gaining another significance for the viewer.

The weight given to documentary and empirical approaches in both Trevale’s and Pombo’s practice, where site-specific participation informs the direction of the works and involves the living culture practiced by people today, can perhaps foster a deeper understanding of the complexities of constructing identity, national symbols and customs that withstanding relocation and time.

Text by curator Victoria Maldonado.

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*Referring to Mary Louise Pratt’s definition of these “social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of asymmetrical relations of power or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today”.

** This perhaps in response to the contact with international influence from the crude oil production (a main economic activity), as well as the galvanization towards an industrialized and modernization.