For thirteen years, visual artist Emi Gutiérrez has been developing her artistic work in French Guiana, creating pieces deeply influenced by the concept of artificiality and humanity's need to interpret the world through systems of signs. Bright and talkative, Emi explains her approach with "CODES 281125. Obsessional Space," her new exhibition presented at the Pagaret Center. This sensitive exploration of the connections between reality, technology, and perception represents the culmination of an artistic journey conducted "at the rhythm of the territory."
A central theme runs through Gutiérrez's work: the codification of the world. Since arriving in French Guiana in 2012, she has exhibited on average every two years, a cycle that allows her to build complete and coherent collections. "Two years is the time I need to construct a new collection, to show accomplished work," she explains. Her new series extends a reflection begun several years ago around virtuality and the permanent use of interfaces. "There is a common thread in my work: this notion of artificiality. Human beings need to artificialize the environment to understand it, to make it readable," the artist confides.
A residency within a computer laboratory reinforced this questioning about the digital world, before the COVID period led her to push her research further. "After COVID, everything accelerated. We needed to code reality even more to continue communicating," Gutiérrez observes. For her, even French Guiana, a territory marked by proximity to nature, does not escape this permanent mediation. "We can no longer discover a place without our phones. We capture, we translate, we code. It has become an interface between us and reality."
The Pagaret Center currently displays twelve sculptures made with various recycled materials bonded with resin and about twenty paintings on paper. These works represent her ongoing exploration of how technology mediates our relationship with the physical world.
Originally from Córdoba, a large university and artistic city in Argentina, Gutiérrez describes growing up in an environment where visual expression was omnipresent. "Córdoba is very dynamic, very colorful, very marked by street art. This shapes sensitivity," she recalls. The artist graduated from Fine Arts in Córdoba and spent three years in Spain before joining France, where she obtained a master's degree in artistic practices and social action. Eventually, Emi and her husband chose French Guiana as a "neutral, open, welcoming territory" where they could build a life project.
Creating in French Guiana presents both potential and challenges. While the territory has offered her grounding, she also highlights the difficulty of the local artistic scene: lack of intermediate structures, few exhibition spaces, and fragile networks. "It's magnificent terrain, but it's a complex path. We lack places, bridges, galleries, art centers that bring us together," she notes. Living exclusively from art in the department remains, according to her, very difficult. "If you depend only on French Guiana, it's complicated. You have to combine several disciplines, look elsewhere, create interactions with other territories."
Regarding artificial intelligence, the artist adopts a lucid stance: "You have to understand it so as not to be afraid of it." However, she deplores the decline of visual education at a time when society has never consumed so many images. "An AI that produces images in front of an audience incapable of reading them – that's where the danger lies," she warns. Nevertheless, she does not see technology replacing the artistic act. "Humanity still needs to return to what is most primitive in it. The artist remains indispensable."
The exhibition opening takes place on November 28, and the show will be visible from December 1 to December 19 during the Pagaret Center's opening hours. Gutiérrez's work continues to challenge viewers to consider how digital mediation shapes our understanding of reality and our relationship with the natural world.
