{"id":19539,"date":"2025-12-30T21:59:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T21:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=19539"},"modified":"2025-12-30T22:01:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T22:01:59","slug":"reframing-archives-from-the-venezuelan-diaspora-angela-bonadies-photographs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=19539","title":{"rendered":"Reframing Archives from the Venezuelan Diaspora: \u00c1ngela Bonadies\u2019 Photographs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article originally appeared in Art Journal<\/em>, 84, no. 4 (Winter 2025)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Instead of asking \u201cWhat is an archive?\u201d then, in a way that leaves the archive outside and retains it as a fortress outside our world, making us its pilgrims, I shall first ask \u201cWhy an archive?\u201d or \u201cWhat do we look for in an archive?,\u201d and only then answer what an archive is.<\/em> \u2014Ariella Azoulay, \u201cArchive\u201d (2017)1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00c1ngela Bonadies, \u201cHeliamphora Heterodoxa,\u201d photographed at the Jardin Botanique de Lyon, France, from the series Las personas y las cosas<\/em>, 2006\u201312 (artwork \u00a9 and provided by Angela Bonadies)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u00c1ngela Bonadies\u2019s (b. 1970) photographic series Las personas y las cosas<\/em> (People and things; 2006\u201312) comprises photographs taken within<\/em> archives, depicting not only the stored files and items but also the material spaces and containers that house the objects. A Venezuelan visual artist living in the diaspora since 1997, Bonadies photographed foreign and national repositories, purposefully selecting subjects that reflect the history of collecting and archiving practices. Curiously, Las personas y las cosas<\/em> originated in an encounter not with an object or a person, despite the title, but with a plant: \u201cun objeto vivo,\u201d a living object, in the artist\u2019s own words. While exploring a botanical garden in Lyon, Bonadies came across\u2014and photographed\u2014a living specimen of the Heliamphora heterodoxa<\/em>, a carnivorous plant native to her homeland, Venezuela.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This unexpected find sparked contemplation on how collections represent\u2014or fail to represent\u2014an idea of the \u201cnation\u201d from abroad. It prompted her to delve deeply into the complex process of archiving while also reframing the very notion of what an archive\u2019s structure represents for a country. As a result, Las personas y las cosas<\/em> brings together a diverse array of collections, including other botanical specimens, animal taxidermy, Indigenous ceramics, photographic records of popular culture, and many other seemingly random items. Bonadies describes her photographic encounter with diverse archives in the artist\u2019s statement that introduces the series:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al visitar esos archivos y colecciones me di cuenta de rasgos espaciales y de organizaci\u00f3n en com\u00fan. Las cosas y su orden empezaron a regir el trabajo y cre\u00e9 mi propia taxonom\u00eda, anclada en las relaciones que suger\u00eda Aby Warburg entre las im\u00e1genes y sus significados y c\u00f3mo se complementan. En este sentido, las clasificaciones se hicieron m\u00e1s teatrales.<\/strong>3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(When visiting those archives and collections, I noticed shared spatial and organizational features. The objects and their arrangement began to guide the work, and I created my own taxonomy, anchored in the relationships that Aby Warburg suggested between images and their meanings and how they complement each other. In this sense, the classifications became more theatrical.) Bonadies\u2019s aesthetic proposal and her reflection on archives, evident throughout her oeuvre, are deeply rooted in her experience as a museography assistant in Venezuelan institutions, particularly at the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas, from 1994 to 1995. During this time, she became interested in the dynamics of archives and storage spaces, which she describes as the \u201cbackstages\u201d where objects, seemingly dormant, generate unique narratives.4<\/a><\/sup> For Bonadies, the archive is not an abstract entity; it is physical. In describing archival classifications as \u201ctheatrical,\u201d she implies that the archive is alive, enacting a performance. Her construction of a unique, \u201cpersonal taxonomy\u201d able to challenge the people\/things duality supports her paradoxical endeavor of defining and simultaneously questioning \u201cnational identity\u201d from her diasporic perspective. In this sense, I argue that at the core of Bonadies\u2019s exploration lies the concept of diaspora as displacement and distancing of personas<\/em> and cosas<\/em>. She disrupts the conventional view of archives as static, confined repositories holding singular meanings in what B\u00e1rbara Mu\u00f1oz Porqu\u00e9 has called a \u201cgestualidad archiv\u00edstica,\u201d or archival gesturality.5<\/a><\/sup> At the same time, her diasporic perspective shows the archive to be dynamic and in constant flux, mirroring the movement of people and their possessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diasporic archives demand distinct interpretations, transcending conventional fixed narratives of identity. As a Venezuelan diaspora photographer based in Madrid, Bonadies delves into the complexities of preserving cultural heritage amid Venezuela\u2019s ongoing migration crisis.6<\/a><\/sup> Instead of perpetuating the archive\u2019s conventional role of solidifying cultural identities, the artist disrupts such narratives by entering the archives and uncovering the hidden, affective essence of stored objects across national divides. In this article, I contend that Bonadies reframes \u201cforeign\u201d and \u201clocal\u201d collections through a global, diasporic point of view, shedding light on Venezuela\u2019s deteriorating national archives and their selective preservation of historical value. Ultimately, I propose that Las personas y las cosas<\/em> can offer a critical perspective on the Venezuelan diaspora, reshaping archiving traditions to reflect the movements, transits, and displacements of both las personas<\/em> and las cosas<\/em>.7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The People of Las personas y las cosas<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Michel Foucault\u2019s well-known conception of the archive as an entity that preserves and organizes knowledge, developed in Les mots et les choses: une arch\u00e9ologie des sciences humaines<\/em> (1966), is hinted at not only in Bonadies\u2019s title, Las personas y las cosas<\/em>, but also in the series\u2019 photographic exploration of object arrangements within archives.8<\/a><\/sup> Bonadies aims to explore the discursivity of objects\u2014the objects\u2019 potential to perform and to speak\u2014and what stories they might tell the viewer. The intriguing shift from words<\/em> to people<\/em> casts doubt on Foucault\u2019s idea of language as mediating our understanding of reality. In response, Bonadies, building on Foucault\u2019s \u201cheterotopia\u201d as a way of rethinking relations and meanings, focuses on the visual enactment, or the \u201ctheatrical\u201d presentation, of subjectivity and, therefore, of emotions. As Jeny Amaya and Betty Mar\u00edn point out, Bonadies contests \u201cthe objectivity of the historical narrative\u201d embedded in archiving practices\u2014pertaining to knowledge production, fixed meanings, and transparency\u2014by revealing the subjectivity inherent in the shaping of such official historical narratives.9<\/a><\/sup> The photographer achieves this by exposing the material qualities of archived objects in a process that I call the reframing<\/em> of the archival space from the positionality of diaspora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the \u201carchival turn,\u201d the archive had traditionally been perceived as an abstract entity in knowledge production or depicted in quantitative terms (as data, items, classificatory lists, and the organization of objects, files, books, and more). From this outlook, lists lose their material essence, and objects cease to be recognized as physical items that power structures accumulate and organize. Expanding on already canonical theorizations of the archive\u2014ranging from its identification as the fixed site for the modern production of knowledge to its feverish deconstruction\u2014scholars in the archival turn have shown that this conceptualization frequently results in the exclusion of other elements and qualities within and beyond the archive itself, reducing it to a mere space or container. Bonadies\u2019s series showcases precisely \u201chow the process of preserving and organizing objects can amplify or hide the objects\u2019 historical significance.\u201d10<\/a><\/sup> The archive, long considered in isolation without any acknowledgment of who created, used, or cared for it, now demands a different approach. The \u201cabstract archive\u201d must be replaced by a \u201cmaterial archive\u201d whose materiality has the potential to unveil the power structures operating within it, enabling deciphering and contestation.11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Bonadies\u2019s photographic series, the nonsequential relationship between what Diana Taylor conceptualizes as \u201carchive\u201d (as enduring written discourse) and \u201crepertoire\u201d (as ephemeral embodied practice) becomes evident through the creation of a photographic performance\u2014what Bonadies describes as \u201ctheatrical.\u201d12<\/a><\/sup> Responding to Ariella Azoulay\u2019s questions that opened this article\u2014\u201cWhy an archive?\u201d or \u201cWhat do we look for in an archive?\u201d\u2014and building on Taylor\u2019s work, I aim to focus on what archives can<\/em> do and what artists\u2014in this case, Bonadies\u2014do<\/em> with archives. Javier Guerrero\u2019s scholarship has significantly influenced the material doing<\/em> of photographic archives, emphasizing their haptic (or tactile) nature and inviting us to \u201ctocar el archivo como piel, tocar la piel de archivo como activador de la plasticidad del cuerpo, activando a su vez las \u00edntimas relaciones entre cultura visual, cultura material, cuerpo y archivo.\u201d13<\/a><\/sup> Studying archives within their sociopolitical contexts and considering their material circulation, as well as the significance of their material production and reproduction, encourages us to view archives as more than mere collections, lists, or containers of objects. Bonadies actively puts these theoretical formulations into practice in Las personas y las cosas<\/em>.14<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The series itself constructs a vast archive. By building a collection of photographs of<\/em> archives, Bonadies encourages us to perceive the archive as a material entity but also to understand it as a method of photographic practice. Bonadies relates the inner workings of archives to those of a photographic camera: a contained space that captures external realities, transforming them into something else\u2014preserving, enclosing, and imbuing them with new meanings.15<\/a><\/sup> Ann Laura Stoler has emphasized that the \u201cpulse of the archive\u201d is discernible only when we focus on the archive as a \u201cprocess,\u201d recognizing its dynamic life and malleability. That pulse lies in the \u201cquiescence and quickened pace of its own production, in the steady and feverish rhythms of repeated incantations, formulas, and frames.\u201d16<\/a><\/sup> In photographically reframing archives, Bonadies is not only deciphering their internal structures and generative forces\u2014and creating new ones\u2014but also exploring the archives\u2019 potential for their meanings to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Las personas y las cosas<\/em>, as a conceptual art project, includes thematic sections, each with a varying number of color photographs, which I analyze below. These sections are titled \u00c1ngulo Central; Cables y Conexiones; Paisajes Enmarcados; Iconograf\u00eda Nacional; Cosas que hablan;<\/em> and Custodios y Testigos (Central Angle; Cables and Connections; Framed Landscapes; National Iconography; Things that speak; Custodians and Witnesses)<\/em> and others not covered here. The first exhibition, held at Perif\u00e9rico Caracas\/Arte Contempor\u00e1neo (Caracas, Venezuela, 2009), featured approximately 130 photographs, some mounted and others displayed in vitrines, in various sizes.17<\/a><\/sup> The two-word section titles allude to Linnaean taxonomy, a binomial system of biological nomenclature, which Bonadies cites in artist\u2019s statement. Created by the \u201cfather of taxonomy,\u201d Carl Linnaeus, in his work Systema Naturae<\/em> (1735), this system was widely used for species identification well into the nineteenth century and aimed to classify living beings into kingdoms\u2014animal, vegetal, and mineral. It then organized species into classes and orders, creating a hierarchical model that simultaneously included and excluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photographs respond to the types of arbitrary preservation processes and organizing principles intrinsic to hegemonic and official archives. In the artist\u2019s statement on the series, Bonadies raises the uncomfortable question of how these processes actually obscure the historical value of objects stored in archives that are connected to an \u201cidea rom\u00e1ntica de pertenencia y al inicio de la forma contempor\u00e1nea de coleccionar.\u201d18<\/a><\/sup> The allusion to Linnaeus and the choice of photography as a medium are intriguing decisions. On the one hand, rather than establishing a hierarchy, Bonadies employs a deliberately ambiguous and disjointed structure throughout the series. She enters various archives, each with its internal classification system, captures these spaces and objects\u2014disrupting their order\u2014and creates a personal organizational apparatus for her image-archive. The series\u2019 division into sections challenges restrictive classifications, revealed only through her own organizing principles, while questioning Linnaeus\u2019s classificatory system. On the other hand, Bonadies also critiques photography as a supposedly faithful tool for archiving and taxonomy creation since the early twentieth century, particularly within colonial botany, the natural sciences, and cultural anthropology. By blurring hierarchies among specimens, objects, and spaces, she challenges archiving norms across disciplines that have relied heavily on visual methods. Her aim is to encourage reflection on how exclusionary systems dominate official historical archives, offering a counter-archive aligned with contemporary theoretical perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The diverse Venezuela-based archives featured in Las personas y las cosas<\/em> include photographic repositories, ornithological collections, private botanical and entomological collections, art collections, blood banks, and many other type of archives.19<\/a><\/sup> Bonadies deliberately withholds information about the specific sites from which the images originate by omitting contextual details and captions, allowing the objects to tell their stories independently of their location.20<\/a><\/sup> In the words of Mu\u00f1oz Porqu\u00e9, \u201c[Bonadies] desterritorializa el origen de los documentos para hacerlos ingresar en un nuevo montaje narrativo.\u201d21<\/a><\/sup> By making the archival spaces untraceable in terms of both visibility and concealment, she creates an interplay between fiction and reality within the series\u2019 internal structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonadies chose archives based not on their historical significance or the value of their contents but on her own perception of shared spatial and temporal organizational traits within these archives\u2014traits she simultaneously aims to challenge by photographically dissecting their internal logics. By bringing together different archives, each with its disconnected temporalities and geographies, Bonadies allows for diverse interpretations based on the \u201cfolding and unfolding\u201d of history as seen in the photographed objects, outside any linear chronology or official history, \u201ceffectively breaking its linear nature and presenting what she describes instead as \u2018smaller, different histories, or [those] of everyday life.\u2019\u201d22<\/a><\/sup> Las personas y las cosas<\/em> juxtaposes seemingly disconnected elements to create a complex network among the elements found within the archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00c1ngela Bonadies, Las personas y las cosas<\/em>, installation view, Perif\u00e9rico Caracas\/Arte Contempor\u00e1neo, 2009. The arrangement of photographs resembles Aby Warburg\u2019s Mnemosyne Atlas (1924\u201329).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\u00c1ngela Bonadies, Untitled, photographed at the Museo Estaci\u00f3n Biol\u00f3gica de Rancho Grande, Parque Nacional Henri Pittier, Maracay, Venezuela, from the series Custodios y Testigos: Las personas y las cosas<\/em>, 2006\u201312 (artwork \u00a9 \u00c1ngela Bonadies)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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As identified by Hal Foster, an \u201carchival impulse\u201d in contemporary art practices\u2014particularly contemporary art photography\u2014has prompted artists to create artifacts that link seemingly unrelated archival objects and spaces by re-contextualizing them, fostering \u201caffective association[s]\u201d rather than objective systems.23<\/a><\/sup> Bonadies\u2019s effort to reframe archives aligns with this contemporary impulse to \u201cconnect what cannot [at first] be connected.\u201d24<\/a><\/sup> In the artist\u2019s statement, she notes that intentionally stripping the archived objects and spaces of context is inspired by the image-relationship system of Aby Warburg\u2019s Mnemosyne Atlas<\/em> (1924\u201329). This \u201catlas\u201d entailed the \u201cdecontextualization\u201d of thousands of images from the (Western) history of visuality. Warburg arranged and rearranged these images based on an operation defined by Georges Didi-Huberman as \u201cmontage,\u201d25<\/a><\/sup> to reflect on the movement, circulation, and transformation of visual icons.26<\/a><\/sup> Along with Warburg, Bonadies questions the logic that, on the one hand, regards chronology in art history as an unquestionable category and, on the other, determines which objects enter\u2014or do not enter\u2014official history.27<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lisa Blackmore has referred to Bonadies as an \u201carchon<\/em> caprichosa\u201d\u2014challenging Derrida\u2019s \u201carchon,\u201d who effects a \u201cl\u00fadica y oximor\u00f3nica\u201d (playful and oxymoronic) reinterpretation of the grandiose role of the archon as the authority within archives.28<\/a><\/sup> This series points to a separation between archival content and the individuals traditionally associated with archives: archivists and users. Bonadies prompts us to consider: Who are the personas<\/em> behind these cosas<\/em>? While most of the images in the series depict objects and spaces, personas<\/em> only appear in Custodios y Testigos<\/em>. This section comprises more than fifteen untitled, full-body portraits featuring not only the owners of personal archives (such as an athlete\u2019s trophy collection or an art collector\u2019s valuables) but also individuals crucial to the survival of historical archives. We often focus on the \u201cintellectuals\u201d who author studies deciphering hidden meanings pulled from the depths of files. In contrast, Bonadies aims to portray those who keep the archive\u2019s content alive, such as custodians, laboratory technicians, cleaners, and assistants, whose work remains largely invisible. She aims to remove the aura that theory has bestowed upon the archive, thereby obscuring the material potential of objects and the individuals responsible for caring for this materiality. Bonadies makes visible their often-unseen labor, including affective labor. The portraits of these custodios<\/em> and testigos<\/em>\u2014agents of the archive\u2014posing among shelves and cabinets contribute to the \u201cperformativity\u201d of the archive\u2019s material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Things of Las personas y las cosas<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As quoted above, Bonadies underscores that the reframing of the archive produced \u201ctheatrical\u201d classifications, determining the \u201corder\u201d of the things she captured. In her own words, theatrical here means a \u201cpuesta en escena que no es tal, pero parece<\/em>, que nos susurra ficciones a trav\u00e9s de la fotograf\u00eda . . . [es] una forma de mostrar que genera otros relatos.\u201d29<\/a><\/sup> In forging connections among objects based solely on the \u201cmeanings\u201d she visually attributes to them, Bonadies develops her own counterarchival process of classification as a performance. The internal structure of Las personas y las cosas<\/em> \u201cinterweaves a narrative that emphasizes the humanization of the archival space and its domestication.\u201d30<\/a><\/sup> Central to this is the anthropomorphism of archived objects, where the photographic camera and the lenses\u2019 reframing imbue objects with a sense of \u201caliveness.\u201d Paradoxically, while preservation might imply the cessation of objects\u2019 functions in the real world, by decontextualizing and opening the meaning of objects, Bonadies portrays them in a way that allows them to continue to exhibit agency and vitality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n