• Dance Camera West CHOREOGRAPHY MEDIA HONORS, L.A
June 2008
for "outstanding achievement"
Rocamora joins Pina Bausch, Vim Vandekeybus and William Forsythe.
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• IMZ DANCE SCREEN AWARD, The Hague
November 2007
for "best screen choreography"
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• IL COREOGRAFO ELETTRONICO, Naples – JURY SPECIAL MENTION
June 2008
•JUMPING FRAMES FESTIVAL, Hong-Kong – JURY SPECIAL MENTION
October 2008
"Ultimate Panel's Choice" (out of competition)
"I start to cry because i saw myself exactly there. I do not know - every movement , the rejection, defence, pain, was real, I thought it was me. It did reflect my life and the pain... I watched more than 6 times, still want to watch again, for me this film was a big reflect(ion) too, because i could not express my feeling in any way. As much as i talk to media about my life i thought there were some things missing, i think i wanted to express myself, my pain in this way the dancers did"
Surma Hamid, main interviewee, Iraq/ U.K
ARTFORUM INTERNATIONAL, NY
March 2009
“Masterfully crafted... the work is magical realism at its best, an engaging travelogue into the past in which reality shimmers like a gentle mirage, while the action keeps moving back and forth between an arid desert, geysers, a salt marsh, and finally a lake.... Standing between the two facing projections produces a sense of being caught between two mirrors, captured in a myse en abyme multiplying one’s perception to infinity... Horizon of exile communicates the artit’s willingness to move beyond topicality. Her video-dreamscape, which sets off the austere physical beauty of the two women against the poetry and barren landscape, maps out a disquieting site of anxiety that is magically universal in its resonance”
Marek Bartelik
Quoted from: "Isabel Rocamora. Sala Parpalló". see full article
LA VANGUARDIA, Spain
25 Feb. 2009
“In Horizon... Rocamora plays using the board of the Atacama desert to create a flow of Escherian question marks, which originate from the interior conflict of Woman subjugated to radicalism. In resonance with the filmography of Iranian/ (Afghan) filmmakers such as Sidiqq Barmak or Samira Mahmalbaff, she generates an even more universal quest, that of identity, which finds its most paradigmatic case in the journey of exile. In that situation, the confrontation with ‘the other’, the direct gaze into the camara, which allows for self-recognition, remains suspended through the use of the veil – the act of hiding. Rocamora situates that erasure of identity, symbolised by the directionless walking of the two women, outside the city – the space of law and convention where masculine power penetrates all intimacy from the minaret. Atacama becomes the projection of the interior space of two women, like Peter Brook’s empty space, who leave for an undefined place, just as arid and vacuous, devoid of any point of reference... Topology and sentimental anatomy here become one and the same thing.”
Ferrán Mateo
Quoted from: "La danza de la liberación" (The dance of liberation). see full article
BONART MAGAZINE, Spain
November 2008
“In this work, the female condition is what configures the argument and stuctures the image. Unfolding against stereotype and using the screen diptych to elaborate a discourse of clear conceptual duality, the work is capable of transmitting deep emotions through the aesthetics of the desert, its characters and its light; while poetically broaching, through stories of female exile, both the possibility of public condemnation and the need for ethical commitment.”
Ricard Silvestre
Quoted from: "Isabel Rocamora, Sala Parpalló".
PORLADANZA MAGAZINE, Spain
Summer 2008
“Rocamora’s bodies seem to be devoid of a centre, something apparently impossible in dance, and that is because they are focused on a feeling of both displacement and absorption: that of a presence and being which challenges otherness. In the 22 minutes of Horizon it seems as though there is no choreography, nonetheless everything is in movement, that same oscillation found in the interior journeys of films by Angelopolous, Egoyan and Tarkovski... Rocamora surprises us with a work which is boundaryless, arriving at ‘another place’, its own place, the perfect site for the distinct world of feelings to be found in Horizon.”
Ferrán Mateo
Quoted from: "Gravityless Horizons" (Horizontes Ingrávidos)
TENDENCIAS DEL ARTE MAGAZINE, Spain
June 2008
"(at Loop Videoart '08) Isabel Rocamora has presented her dual screen installation Horizon of exile which she calls cinematic. Performer, choreographer and film director, her installation is truly impressive for its beauty, sensibility and content".
Magda Perera
Quoted from: "Collecting conceptual art" (Coleccionando arte conceptual)
FOX NEWS, Los Angeles, U.S (TV)
9 July 2008
"Some of the most poetic work ever seen on screen"
Christine Devine
EL PERIODICO, Catalonia
11 May 2008
Interview
"There are indeed women (creators of videoart), but if you were to ask me off the top of my head what the key videoartists are I can think of quite a few male names - says Isabel Rocamora, whose work is currently being exhibited at Senda Gallery -. Were there to be more women we could create a very different language. After a few moments reflection she starts to name: the Iranian Shirin Neshat, the Suiss Pipilotti Rist, and the Finnish Eija-Liisa Athila."
Gemma Tramullas
Quoted from "Female presence in exhibitions. Contemporary art places women at the top of the creative map" (Presencia femenina en exposiciones. El arte contemporáneo encumbra a las mujeres creadoras)
4 Dance, CHANNEL 4, U.K
Broadcast date: 27 and 31 January 2008/09
"(Horizon) presents the two most powerful characters in this programme"
Jonzi D
LUXFLUX ARTE CONTEMPORANEA MAGAZINE, Italy
January 2008 Issue
“An original treatment of a social theme, developing an interesting research on language, was beautifully expressed by filmmaker and choreographer Isabel Rocamora. In Horizon of exile she builds an existential, emotive imaginary of exile (of Middle Eastern woman) by uniting the suggestion of place to that of experimental choreography”.
Veronica D’Auria
Quoted from: "Milan's five video days" (Le cinque video-giornate di Milano)
THE VILLAGE VOICE, NY
8th Jan 2008
"Dancers in open air often look out of place, but in one of the most moving short films I saw, Isabel Rocamora's Horizon of Exile, two dancers achingly embody the testimonies of Iraqi women exiles. Wearing heavy, black-cotton dresses, whose rustling is almost the only sound, the two face a great expanse of desert to reach the border and rest in a hellish gray landscape of bubbling hot springs. Slowly rolling and twisting in the barrenness, they express with great economy both the pain of leaving and the pain of staying".
Deborah Jowitt
GUARDIAN UNLIMITED, U.K
23 Nov 2007
"One of the most successful in this emerging field (of dance for camera) is choreographer and film-maker Isabel Rocamora. Her dance film Horizon of Exile has just picked up a best film award at the Dance film festival in The Hague.
...
Rocamora positions the dancers against a desert backdrop, their movements creating a series of sculptures. The film is essentially about cultural identity and exile - but, as in ballet, the forms and the movement convey the narrative. Rocamora has a background as an anti-gravity artist, and this strong physical sense of circus-like tension runs through her work. The fluidity of the choreography also brings to mind snippets of early images of the free dancing pioneer, Isadora Duncan.
...
In the way that the relationship between Fonteyn and Nureyev could be scrutinised in tenderness several feet high, the muscular and emotional tensions of Rocamora's dancers give the sense of gazing on vast public sculpture in a stark natural space.
The held positions of Horizon afford a quite different sensation of viewing the body in motion than, say, parkour - or free running which draws on expressive volition of a figure through an urbanscape."
Christine Finn
RUNRIOT.COM
30 Oct 2007
"After a long wait Isabel Rocamora’s newest work is about to premier in Valparaíso, Chile...
Having seen both her previous cinematic works I can firmly say they look and feel as good as Baraka, if you get the chance to see it, you simply must.
...
My god it is sumptuous; Sparse, Minimal, Lush, so textured you can virtually Taste it, so powerful too, the interaction between the dual screen set-up is intense.
...
The piece as a whole altho only a shade over 20 min is epic, the setting is stunning in the desert and littoral of a tidal river, the sparse spoken word is powerful when it comes"
Michael Heap
Quoted from: "Isabel Rocamora. Horizon of exile"
For bibliography of all articles and reviews on the artist CLICK HERE