From the mid-1970s, the Uruguayan artist Yamandú Canosa (b. 1954) has resided in Barcelona. However, during childhood and part of his youth, he lived in Montevideo, in a riverside neighborhood where the daily visual reference was almost of marine immensity. His studies in architecture and the familial ties he had with visual artists, among them, Miguel Ángel Pareja (1908–84), as well as with poets, especially Amanda Berenguer (1921–2010), combined with the experience of geographical displacement, transformed him into a reflective reference point on landscape, either as a subjective layer or as a collective identity shaper. In his work, Canosa generates complex narratives through cultural, ethical, and political differences and links in his visual poetics (with the aid of photographic material, paintings, and drawings). His entire artistic development is based on a matrix that questions other disciplines and the current debate about them, suchs as anthropology and the history of thought, among others. From his visual arts perspective, he moves toward those spaces that run with different communicative languages and toward a certain visual grammar referenced as the horizon line: this understood as a double entendre of a dividing line and a metaphorical reverie, which is drawn, in a persistent way, from the coastal landscape of Uruguay. From a very personal place, his work addresses issues relating to memory, identity, migration, and the construction of “sense” through visual transit.
[As complementary reading, please refer to the ICAA digital archive for the interview by Rosa Queralt on Yamandú Canosa’s work, “Acerca de la letra h [entrevista a Yamandú Canosa]” (doc. no. 1247647)].
