La Casa
After leaving Venezuela, Daniela began to question where home truly was. La Casa examines the many connotations of the house, centring on the relationship between place, body, and self. Across seven chapters, she collaborated with photographers and artists in both Caracas and London – her two homes – to explore the experience of home. Sometimes an extension of the self, at other times a prison, home might be found in the body, in nature, or far from one’s birthplace.
Using masks and dolls crafted from second-hand garments and found objects (which, like buildings and bodies, bear the marks of time), the images reflect on the connection between women and domestic space, as well as its subversion, and themes of identity, migration, and nostalgia.
This is a haunted house. Fears, anxieties and desires are hidden behind its doors. Repressed memories wander like ghosts.
The blurred boundaries between house, body, and psyche take centre stage in Home, a Metaphor of the Mind. An ode to the Venezuelan classic radio show Nuestro Insólito Universo (“Our Unusual Universe”), this chapter tells the fictional story of Nancy Quintana, a migrant woman who, after fainting, wakes in her childhood home surrounded by spectres of the past. The short film was runner-up in the ASVOFF x ARTSTHREAD x FNL Network competition and also selected for the Official Selection of the 2020 FFFMilano.
In Body as Home, the dialogue between woman and nature is at the forefront. The body is portrayed as the original, constant home – beginning with the maternal womb – though, like the idea of home, it is always changing.
Artist Kimia Amini created four masks representing the archetypes of the menstrual cycle: The Maiden, The Mother, The Enchantress, and The Crone. The motif of pregnancy, present in Louise Bourgeois’ work, appears here too, but at times subverted: a monstrous woman gives birth to a terrifying child, echoing Barbara Creed’s concept of the “monstrous-feminine.”
A love letter to Caracas, Homeland explores a deeply personal relationship with one’s native country, countering negative portrayals of Venezuela with affection and pride.
This house is not the dream house. As it falls apart, it serves as a poignant reminder of the passage of time and the fragility of life. An odour emanates from the inside. Dirt threatens the four walls.
Home as an Extension of the Self explores the process of ageing and decay through the presence of holes, stains, and smells in the house, body, and clothes.
The accompanying film was part of the Official Selection of the 2020 FFFMilano.
Home as Prison presents a darker vision of the house, one marked by entrapment and anxiety. It recalls the nationwide power outages (“apagones”) that struck Venezuela in March. The images evoke the chaos, from the struggle to find water to the impossibility of communication, and the reality of food spoiling in powerless refrigerators.
The old house is claustrophobic. The new home is solitary. In the imagined house, she feels at home.
Home in the Exile examines the construction of home in the diaspora, unfolding in three stages: first, the girl feels trapped and dreams of leaving; upon arriving in a foreign land, she begins to integrate, though feelings of isolation and alienation persist; finally, she returns through memory to an idealised home that never existed.
The protagonist, evoking Francis Upritchard’s lonely figures, is accompanied by her alter-ego doll – a nod to Georgina Starr’s The Making of Junior and Marisol Escobar’s sculptures.
Non-Home reflects on what fails to feel like home. Drawing on Marc Augé’s concept of the “non-place” – a transitory space where people remain anonymous – it was photographed in the abandoned Miramar Hotel, once a luxury destination opened in 1928.
The series also pays homage to the magical world of Armando Reverón and Juanita Ríos, whose iconic home, El Castillete, was destroyed during the 1999 Vargas mudslides. Models wear long doll-like arms and masks, dancing with replicas of Reverón’s inanimate muses in an attempt to find a face and create bonds in a country filled with ghost buildings.