Yapci Ramos
No Stress Bar, 2015

No Stress Bar is the third installament in Ramos’s ongoing intimate dialog between the artist and “prostitutes” from around the world. It is a living portrait of the women behind the word more commonly applied to them: “putas” (whores), as they are in their ordinary daily settings. At the core of her consideration is the unrelentingly grim view of the world these women occupy, that impossibility of fathoming another kind of understanding of what “putas” stands for in the larger imagination. Ramos’s inquisitive eye reveals deeply moving stories as she turns her nonjudgmental gaze on each reality she comes across, invalidating the belief that “a prostitute is a dirty woman;” that nothing good can come of her.

“… Ramos found another kind of prostitution in Central Africa and produced the third series in exhibition: No Stress Bar (Republic of Congo, 2014). In Brazzaville, the Republic’s capital city and financial center, Ramos witnesses women and teenage girls waiting for men who might pick them up and offer as exchange for sex a lifetime of economic stability.”

Excerpt from Catinca Tabacaru.