Ouka Leele, a survivor of Madrid's 'movida' presents her new black and white pieces at Museo del Traje.

20 May 2008

MADRID - The Madrid-born photographer and painter walks around Ouka Leele, inédita (Ouka Leele, unedited) the show at Madrid's Museo del Traje devoted to her art - from her black and white pieces to her recent photographs taken with a camera with "lots of megapixels," as well as dresses, models and two audiovisual installations. Leele's work is testament to her maxim: "You have to believe to see, not see to believe." 

This is not the first time she has exhibited her work in the Madrid fashion museum. In 1987, when the same building situated near Moncloa was the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (MEAC), Ouka displayed her famous painted photos. At the time, the museum director had wanted to introduce photography as a new medium in modern art. 

These were the years that followed the famous movida - the Madrid-based counterculture movement following Franco's death - a time and spirit that has permanently left its mark on Ouka, born in 1957, and who went by her real name of Bárbara Allende until 1978. 

"I think I can now safely say that photography loves me;  every time I try to move away from it, it brings me back. I recognise that it's a language I find comes very easily to me," says Ouka. 

"The last time, when I was in the midst of a creative crisis and about to give it up and take up painting (adding colour to a photo can be a whole day's work, so I started moving towards painting, which was faster), I got a phone call from the Culture Ministry. I was eating lentils in Ceutí (Murcia), and had just got down from a scaffold which I was using to paint a 300-meter-square mural. The call was to tell me that I'd won the 2005 National Photography Prize."

And so Ouka focused her energies through the camera lens once more. Such a prestigious prize could not come by  mistake. "Digital photography has got me working faster again," explains Leele, for whose work light continues to be a vital element. "But the light which radiates from people," she clarifies. 

"I laugh when someone tells me that they're not photogenic; I can be interested by a fallen eyelash or the iris of an eye that has a patch of colour. When I retouch a photo, I don't change things, rather I bring out everything that's hidden in that image."

It was during this same hi-tech period that she captured "with a Leica" La escalera del sueño de Jacob, por la que suben y bajan los ángeles (Jacob's ladder, which angels go up and down), a sort of Impressionist image populated by members of the Down's syndrome dance company, Danza Down, which is now on show at the Museo del Traje. 

The exhibition - which runs until 8 June - is the fruit of five months' hard graft, going through thousands of old negatives tucked away in old albums. "It was not an easy task," says Rafael Gordon, curator of the exhibition and author of a film about Ouka which is almost complete.

But despite her love of the photographic image, Leele has always been keen to avoid being pigeonholed. "I never wanted to be a photographer. At the beginning I chose to not look for a sense of complicity with my models; I felt like a treacherous spy, armed with a shotgun and ready to shoot." 

That was the artist's philosophy shortly after deciding to leave her course at the Fine Arts faculty to take a course in photography. 

"I  thought then that I needed a common thread - something that would give my work continuity, something I'm now totally against. My struggle for the last few years has been to avoid being associated with any one discipline. Neither photographer, nor painter; a multi-faceted artist is what I wanted to be. I rejected collage, I wanted everything to be real, but I played around and I cut and I stuck, and a frog was looking at a lady selling lettuces while my foot felt tickled by the moral of the tale." Thus explains Ouka one of the works currently on show in Madrid: Rana alucinada con mi pie ante vendedora de luchagas, imposible (1975) (Impossible scene of a frog fascinated by my foot in front of a lettuce seller).

In the same surreal yet compelling vein is Mis invitados al banquete (My guests at the banquet), taken during the television program Con las manos en la masa in which the guests present their recipes. 

That evening Ouka Leele revealed her chocolate secrets while reciting the mystic poet San Juan de La Cruz. She then directed the camera at the table where a white rabbit and golden labrador sit nonchalantly amongst the leftovers of her chocolate feast. 

Also on display are several portraits of women - including her sister Marta and her daughter hanging from a circus trapeze and some nudes: "People normally tell me that my nudes don't look like nudes. Maybe the feminine voice brings another sensibility to the image."

Ouka Leele, inédita is on until 8 June at Museo del Traje.

text by El Pais / Amelia Castilla / Expatica
photo by Flickr contributor losmininos