Manuela Ribadeneira

Tiwintza Mon Amour [Tiwintza my love]. 2005. Sculpture. Courtesy Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection.

Quito, Ecuador, 1966. Lives in London, England.


Ideas about territory are central to Manuela Ribadeneira’s art practice, involving the political, social, economic, cultural and symbolic implications of the boundaries between one thing and another. Her works can also be said to operate always from a place of symbolic mobility in which interpretations shift and are enriched depending on the context in which they are shown. Informed by historical analysis, making formal use of a sober and direct conceptual language, her works are also mostly linked thematically with the context of Ecuador and Latin America. Based in Europe for more than ten years, Ribadeneira has made use of the geographical distance from her country to reflect on issues of post-colonialism and construction of identity. Aquí se hace lo que digo yo [Here, what I say goes] (2008) is a text carved onto stone that stands as a statement related to games of power and gender and the roles played within a social, political and cultural structure. Other works, like Un metro de línea ecuatorial [A metre of the line of the equator] (2007), materialise the imaginary line dividing the planet into north and south.
 
Hago mío este territorio [I make this territory mine] (2007) symbolically reclaims a territory by means of a knife thrust into a wall. The written phrase suggests ideas of rituals of possession and conquest.
 
Tiwintza Mon Amour [Tiwintza my love] (2005) is a 1:1000 scale sculpture representing a square kilometre of Peruvian forest which was ceded to Ecuador in resolution of a land dispute. It is a poetic comment about the processes of border demarcation – often absurd and inflexible – and the role they play in the national imagination.