This text is a criticism written by Natalia Gutiérrez of the work, Corte en el ojo [Cut in the Eye](2000), by Miguel Ángel Rojas. She develops it based on ideas of “place” and “no place,” as well as the paradox between them established by the anthropologist, Marc Augé, understood as contemporary man’s opportunity to go from avoiding the “no place” to the affirmation and permanence of the “place.” To Gutiérrez, Corte en el ojo makes this paradox evident, when it shows how a movie theater (that is, a “no place”) can be turned into a “place.” Thus, it enables men to affirm their identity through the sexual encounters that may take place there. The writer paraphrases the critic, André Bazin, when he says that “when reality does not interest us, we invent an erotic enrichment of life and also throw our lot in with the illusion and hope of cinema and art.” Gutiérrez reaches the conclusion that, to Rojas, “photography is the ‘place’ where he may affirm his identity as a subject and as an artist,” and the “no-place” his own experience.

This text on the work, Corte en el ojo (2000), by Miguel Ángel Rojas (b. 1946), is one of the most important articles written by the art theoretician/critic, Natalia Gutiérrez (b. 1954). It gives us a perspective resulting from some years of studying Rojas’s work presented in a publication that seeks to provide analyses of contemporary Colombian art. The text was included in the publication Ciudad Espejo [Mirror City] in which Gutiérrez contributed interviews and essays on some of the works chosen for the XXXIX Salón Nacional de Artistas [39th National Artists Salon] (2004).

Between 1973 and 1979, the Colombian artist took numerous photographs through peepholes found in the bathroom doors of several theaters in Bogotá. The culmination of that work was a series of photographs taken in the teatro Faenza [Faenza Theater], in the capital, in 1979, the same year Rojas had an exhibition in New York. Twenty years later, in 2000, in response to a request from Gutiérrez, Rojas returned to the place (teatro Faenza). After all the interviews she had done with the artist, the art critic suggested that he do a recording in front of that site. Upon his return, Rojas recorded a walk through the interior of the theater.

The work, Corte en el ojo, is a video, the first part of which shows the photographs from the teatro Faenza series (taken in 1979). The second part is the walk captured by Rojas with the video camera in the same place, 20 years later. This is an important work because it encompasses two periods in Rojas’s work, thus becoming a work folded in on itself.

For further information, the reader may see the interview of Miguel Ángel Rojas done by Natalia Gutiérrez and also published in Ciudad Espejo [see doc. no. 1099201].