....Magaly Ponce is a video and installation artist from Chile. She studied graphic design at Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaíso Chile. She received a creative video grant awarded in Latin America by the Rockefeller, MacArthur, and Lampadia Foundations. Later, she received a creative video grant, awarded by Fundación Andes, in Chile. She graduated with an MFA, thanks to a two-year Fulbright grant and a fellowship at Syracuse University. Ponce currently teaches new media at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. Her work has been exhibited widely in her home country of Chile, Denmark, Korea, and in the United States. Ponce’s inspiration comes from a variety of sources, ranging from repression, anxiety, and anger, to love, admiration and contemplation. She uses metaphoric language to convey the complexity of the subject matter, something which explicitness cannot convey. Her work shifts from the poetic to the political, expressing a love for sound and crafted imagery.

....I was born in a mining town in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The town no longer exists, and since its disappearance, I have lived with a sense of displacement. In my work, the desert and its vastness signify home.
There, I was raised under two dominant institutions, a military dictatorship, and the Catholic Church. The far-reaching fear they imposed, led others and me to self-censorship. I picture self-censorship as a screen, mediating the inner and outer self, relationships, and our connection to the landscape. This screen is the possibility of dialogue both conceptual and technological.

....I started making art to rationalize complex emotions. I am attracted to video because it excites many of our senses and opens a window to an inner dimension. I am attracted to sound because of its three-dimensional quality, and its physical presence in an outer dimension. My video installation work attempts to reconcile the inner/outer dichotomy, by combining the subliminal quality of projected video, the spaciousness of audio and the presence of people. This formal challenge of combining two, three, and four dimensions aims at recreating the stillness of the desert.

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