Interlogue No. 1: Rituales presents Jan Rattia’s unapologetically personal work, a memoir of his past and present life told through depictions of queer bodies and art-historical references.
Rattia’s father, Luis, was a photographer, and as a young child, Rattia remembers the ritual of being photographed, of being seen. In this collection of images, the artist captures slices of his present that are informed and sculpted by his familial history of diaspora and constant movement. In and out of a pandemic, in and out of the United States, in and out of nature, Rattia’s photographs are not linked to a specific land. Whether he’s crossing the Andes or the East River, Rattia photographs subjects that whisper to the past and address the present simultaneously. A photograph of a sculpture of Ugolino’s son or a framed portrait sitting on a desk both draw the contours of Rattia’s vision. Among the images included in, a suspended figure, that of a queer asylum-seeker, finds itself extracted from its photographic context. Rattia’s photographs grasp at something hard to describe; an internal dialogue aiming to capture a sensation of simultaneous remembrance and experience.
Essay by Wayne Koestenbaum
Editorial design by C.E. Kempff Seleme
Artist numbered edition of 150
50 pages
Tabloid sized & unbound
Printed in New York
