Born in Buenos Aires in 1969, Rosana Schoijett is one of the main artists from her generation working with photography in Argentina. Since the ‘90s she has developed several series which have a strong conceptual approach as well as an exquisite formal resolution. In the last decade she has temporarily moved away from capturing photographic images in order to focus on making collages using photographs printed in vintage high quality books. For this purpose she searches second-hand bookstores to find several copies of the same coffee-table book, often devoted to images of art or nature, which are beautifully printed on velvety papers, and then builds laborious pieces overlapping cut-outs from the same page from these different copies of one published title. They are hand-sewn to create 3-D relief, and sometimes framed in three hinged glass panels, resembling an altarpiece, which allows the viewing of the threads that hold the collage together on the back of each page. As a photographer working in the digital age, she became interested in the book as fetish and in a method of production that deliberately ignores anything digital. She is also compelled to revisit the long standing tradition, from surrealism to neo-conceptualism, of women artists making collages.
Rosana Schoijett studied photography and film. Has worked as professional photographer for several publications since 1992. Was a fellow at the Programa para las Artes Visuales Rojas-Kuitca 2003-2005 and at the Programa Intercampos II 2006 sponsored by Telefónica Foundation. Her work has been shown at MALBA, Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires; MAMBA Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires; Museo de Bellas Artes; Fundación Proa, Buenos Airesl; Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscú, URRS; Le 19 CRAC Centre Cultural Montbeliard, France; Centro Fotográfico Manuel Alvarez Bravo, México; Premio Braque; Solo Projects ARCOmadrid; among others.
