home
links
contact
 


 


 

Ana Matey

[Photo: Miguel Gil]

Ana Matey is an artist, photographer, and independent manager. She studied photography, Communications, Technical Image, and Butoh dance (with Masaki Iwana, Wendell Wells, Yuko Kaseki, among others). Currently she lives 25km from Madrid, in a property called MATSU, which is a home and studio, and since January 2012 has functioned as a space for contemporary creation, where she often invites other artists and hosts workshops.

Matey’s first solo exhibition was in 2001 and since 2006 she has been deeply dedicated to action art. She works with performance, photo, video, drawing and installation. Her work has been presented in museums, galleries and alternative spaces, both at national and international level in Europe, Mexico and Japan. Recent work has been presented at Ateneo Teather (Madrid), Mothers Tongue Festival (Helsinki), Casa de Vacas (Salamanca), ANX (Oslo) and Catalyst Art (N. Ireland). She has participated in round tables, panels and presentations of her work, most recently at Casa de las Conchas at Salamanca, Faculty of Fine Arts and Espacio b (Madrid) and at MACA Museum (Alicante).

Matey co­founded ELCARROMATO, the collective and a multidisciplinary space that existed for five years in the Barrio de la Letras of Madrid. During this time, she shaped ARTÓN, a monthly event dedicated to the practice, dissemination, investigation and documentation of action art. Currently, she collaborates with the Isabel León, and together they organize EXCHANGE Live Art.

www.anamatey.com
www.exchangeliveart.com

STATEMENT
Art and life are the same to me, “art – it’s a way of living”. My interest in both art and life is to develop consciousness. This is one of the one of the most important aspects as a living being. Through the practice of Butoh and yoga, my concept and sensitivity of my body has changed, transforming until now in body­jail, body­nest and body­territory.

I'm interested in the process, collect, move, slow, silence, simplicity, observe, react, experience from the experiential. Because all of these action art is the medium best suited to my interests both alive and in other formats. My creative process begins with the action of walking, an act that opens myself to the world at the same time that immersed me in my own being. In the way I collected elements, thoughts, events a beginning of processes to observe. The walks have gone from the city to the forests and mountains. From society to nature and again to society. Different observations that lead me to learn about life, about me, about how we relate to ourselves, others and nature.

Through my body I explore Time and Identity concepts. I am interested in the time, present each moment, faster than my being...but at the same time an abstract concept that doesn’t exist, we give it existence. I understand the body as a place from where I am, the body as a space where it is written the history of the individual, and where at the same time it is express their contradictions and accelerations. The body as a medium through which I communicate with the world. The body is in a continuous process. Always interest on the boundaries, be in between, places in which you are continuously wonder about frontiers: political, social, individual and territorial.

 

List of Works