11th May – 1st June 2024, Madrid

“THERE IS OF COURSE A PERSONAL AND DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN THE PLACES THAT I LATER DEPICT BUT(AND), MY ARTISTIC PRACTICE INVOLVES RESEARCHING INTO HISTORICAL ARCHIVES LOOKING FOR TESTIMONIALS FROM OTHER VISITORS , NARRATIVES, LEGAL DOCUMENTATION, MEDIA THAT IS DECONSTRUCTED IN ORDER TO RE-BUILD ANOTHER REALITY THAT IS LINKED TO VISUAL EMOTIONS AND THE NARRATIVE OF IMAGES, OBJECTS AND GRAPHICS.”

The Art of Disappearing tries to bring awareness of the languid evanescence of the Arbore tribe in Ethiopia where their last 2,300 members are currently living. The modernization of the roads and the easier access of visitors are changing their way of life. They become others, losing, first slowly and lately in an accelerated way, their identity.  Cultural disappearance is brought about by changes in the traditional way of life, from the means of transportation to the pollution of modern lifestyles.

I have watched them disappear for years. Like so many in so many other sites. The roads, financed and built by the Chinese government, force their relocation. The trucks pass by, flooding people and cabins with dust.

This work is intended as well to be a glimpse at the other side of the mirror, trying to understand what it reflects and how we are interpreted by the “other” when he goes from being observed to being an observer.

In this series, text, objects and images are juxtaposed so that the conscious and unconscious are related, re-signifying in an articulated way the conversation between parallel and yet convergent universes.  The “indigenous” proposal together with the experiences, prejudgments and sensibilities of the photographer is shaping my experience.

I am not interested in images as objective elements per se, I wanted to contextualize them (never better said) aided by real anecdotes lived in the first person and others narrated by third parties with the intention of bringing to the viewer the Real experience –if this ever exists- of this world, unlike the Hyperreal or Ideal indigenous world.

Harry Fisch.- Madrid, 2022