Eduardo Gil's work takes as his main subject the tension between individual subjectivity and collective identity. Using a variety of media including video, sound, text, and found objects, he explores the ambiguities of language and experience to reflect upon memory, history, politics, community, and social practices.
His artworks use absurdity and irony as a means of unsettling and blurring distinctions or breaking down notions that are often construed as fixed dichotomies; for example, inside versus outside, here versus there, self versus others, or worthless versus worthy. In his installations involving orphanages, his decision to use soiled objects that once belonged to orphans entails both a real-life impact on the orphans - their used object is elevated to the status of artwork and they each receive new replacements - as well as an artificial experience for the viewer, which deploys local superstition as a way of reckoning with each child's profound loss and powerlessness.
Working conceptually, Gil chooses his medium for each individual artwork by considering the process of art production and its greatest potential impact on the viewer. His goal with each work is to create a specific, purposeful experience for the audience in which identity sheds its conventional role as a stable, unidirectional resting point and becomes instead multi-directional, fluid, and in flux.
Eduardo Gil's work takes as his main subject the tension between individual subjectivity and collective identity. Using a variety of media including video, sound, text, and found objects, he explores the ambiguities of language and experience to reflect upon memory, history, politics, community, and social practices.
His artworks use absurdity and irony as a means of unsettling and blurring distinctions or breaking down notions that are often construed as fixed dichotomies; for example, inside versus outside, here versus there, self versus others, or worthless versus worthy. In his installations involving orphanages, his decision to use soiled objects that once belonged to orphans entails both a real-life impact on the orphans - their used object is elevated to the status of artwork and they each receive new replacements - as well as an artificial experience for the viewer, which deploys local superstition as a way of reckoning with each child's profound loss and powerlessness.
Working conceptually, Gil chooses his medium for each individual artwork by considering the process of art production and its greatest potential impact on the viewer. His goal with each work is to create a specific, purposeful experience for the audience in which identity sheds its conventional role as a stable, unidirectional resting point and becomes instead multi-directional, fluid, and in flux.
