Ruina #25

Cecilia de Val (Zaragoza, Spain, 1975) explores the identity and the relationship of the individual with his/her environment. On her photographs Cecilia self-portraits like a modern heroin who shapes her adventures and her settings as she pleases: postindustrial ruins, enchanted forests, sci-fi sets, and suburban architectures. Sometimes, cut-out doppelgangers and ghosts of Cecilia tread silent dreams of pain, treason, and conspiracy. The crossover of genres like science-fiction literature, short stories, fantasy cinema, comics, and Renaissance painting produce disturbing and shifting images, nearly ungrasping, on the boundaries of the subconscious. Her themes question individuality and identity by means of their opposite: multiplicity and double. In her most recent project “El Monte Perdido” Cecilia carries out a postphotographic experiment in which she (un)develops photographs by means of a chemical process, thus creating new landscapes loaded with reflections on the deconstruction of the photographic image and the impact of the digital age on photography.