Yapci Ramos
Back & Forth, 2018

Photographs taken ten years prior (in 2006-2008) exposing a generation full of strength and expectations, are set in dialogue with videos made in 2018, in which the same people take stock of their respective lives during the past decade.

Back & Forth is a kind of then-and-now story, with the inevitable poignancy of younger dreams and possibilities checked by reality and constricted by the passage of time. A series of larger-than-life, full-frontal nudes flank one wall, Almodóvar- like personas as heroes. The installation is made up of two parts. On one side of the room, a large mural with pictures of Ramos’s friends during her time in Barcelona, taken around 10 years ago. On the opposite wall, eight recently made, three-channel video interviews are projected in which each talks about their present life, some living in Barcelona, others in New York, Paris and elsewhere, comparing it with what they had hoped to accomplish for themselves. One is Mayra, who recounts her story of ups and downs with fatalism and laughter, backgrounded by the exuberant decor of the bar she owns. Another is Charles, who seems lost, unhappy, pacing literally and metaphorically back and forth in a white, nearly empty room.

Excerpt from essay by LILLY WEI, Independent Curator and Critic