Charly Nijensohn
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1966
Nijenshon's work is marked by a link between people and nature: the intervention of the former and the overflowing capacity of the latter. In this tug-of-war, his artistic journey is adventurous but also stripped. His projects begin with a journey, a destination, and a buyer who is usually the one who finances the work, a work dynamic and very different from that of many artists. "Tengo que atravesar un umbral para entrar en el modo de creación poética y ese umbral tiene que ver con irme del lugar donde estoy, para lograr ver esa realidad extraordinaria,” [I have to cross a threshold to enter the mode of poetic creation, and that threshold has to do with leaving the place where I am, in order to see that extraordinary reality,] he said in an interview for the Museo Moderno.
Among his most important pieces is Dead Forest (2015), of which the main image is a series of dead trees coming out of the water. The piece shows how, in the Amazonia but also in almost all South American countries, the environment is modified to supply electricity. In the video, you can see the forests, flooded by the largest artificial lake in Latin America, born from the damming of the Uatumã River, to build the Balbina hydroelectric dam, which provides energy to Manaus, leaving the native tribes displaced from their ancestral territory.
His trajectory is based on what, in the 1990s, was called video art, later incorporating other practices, such as performance, photography, and installation. At a very early age, he was one of the founding members of Organización Negra, an experimental theater group that performed in unconventional spaces, adding multimedia elements and generating interaction with the public, so that they could actively participate. In this sense, to this day, his projects are adapted and developed in relation to their natural and social context and to the confrontation between human beings and the forces of nature.
