Monólogo colectivo

Throughout her career, British-Argentinian artist Jessica Sarah Rinland has incisively and provocatively examined the imbrication of the human and the natural world, particularly as mediated by institutions. In MONÓLOGO COLECTIVO, her second feature, she trains her ever-precise eye on Buenos Aires’ former municipal zoo and other regional animal parks in moments of flux, which includes the zoo’s major transformation into an “ecological attraction”. Rinland invokes contemporary social questions and debates about the implicit violence of the zoo, drawing relevant connections to their 19th century emergence within the context—at least in the Americas—of colonialism, conquest, exploitation and control. Shot on shimmering 16mm, MONÓLOGO COLECTIVO is at once quiet and focused while beautifully open in construction, a film that also revolves around interspecies connection as well as gender and labour. Slowly, deliberately, it not only gives space to the creatures housed in these spaces but also to the little seen and underappreciated humans whose lives are dedicated to their care. (Jesse Cumming) 

In the presence of Jessica Sarah Rinland.

Jessica Sarah Rinland: EXPRESSION OF THE SIGHTLESS (2016, K), Y BERÁ: AGUAS DE LUZ (2016, K), BLACK POND (2018), THOSE THAT, AT A DISTANCE, RESEMBLE ANOTHER (2019), SOL DE CAMPINAS (2021, K), QUERIDA CHICK (2021, K)