Francisca Duran

BIO

Francisca Duran is a Chilean-Canadian experimental media artist who creates films, video installation, and 2D, photo-based, mixed-media works about history, memory and violence. Duran has exhibited internationally at film festivals and venues including Edinburgh International Film Festival, International Film Festival at Rotterdam, HotDocs, Arkipel, Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles Film Forum, John Hansard Gallery and Gallery 44. Duran holds an M.F.A. from York University and a B.A.H. from Queen’s University and continues her professional development through artist mentorships and artist-run centres. Currently, she serves as sessional faculty at York University and conducts plant-based-processing and phytography workshops internationally.

ARTIST STATEMENT
My artwork looks at history, memory and violence through the aperture of the archive: assembled and accidental. I create films, video installation, and 2D, photo-based, mixed-media works. Born in Santiago, Chile in 1967, I came to Canada as a refugee following the 1973 military coup that ousted elected president Salvador Allende. This event – the experience of exile and its reckoning – is integral to my artistic practice.

I am interested in traces and lost, irretrievable things. I take images and audio apart, and reassemble them to reveal the the tactile qualities of media that are often thought of as ephemeral. Using a variety of digital and analogue media, processes and methodologies — photographs, film and digital video, hand drawing and digital illustration, analogue and digital found footage, downloaded images, texts and type, animation — I seek to make visible, to give a graphical representation and physicality to what is usually perceived as invisible and intangible, for instance, light, sound and memory. I strive to locate and follow circuitous paths produced by the intersections of the body, language and translation, popular culture, new technologies, old technologies, lost and abandoned technologies, humans and other-than-humans, archival films and recordings, personal stories, news stories, historical documents, politics, and works of art.

I am interested in the acts of looking and documenting and in the results, both pleasurable and painful. These formal and material experimentations act as metaphor for memory.

Distribution: Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre
Vimeo page: https://vimeo.com/franciduran
I place only a few works and motion tests for free viewing on vimeo. Please contact me at franciduran.artist@gmail.com or through cfmdc (bookings@cfmdc) if you would like to see my work. I am pleased to send password protected links. Thank you.