Ana Jotta

Critical text

The multifaceted work of Ana Jotta (b. 1946, Lisbon) eludes any attempt at stylistic classification or typological definition. The proliferation and versatility of her practice are her distinctive characteristic. Borrowing freely from sources of inspiration like the art history, cinema, poetry, pop and folk culture, comics and children’s books, Jotta creates an idiosyncratic world whose modus operandi consists of avoiding rules. She nimbly and rigorously dismantles precepts of distinction between art and life, or between “low” and “high” cultures, employing domestic techniques and crafts without any hierarchy distinction (painting, drawing, collage, pottery, installation, embroidery, sewing and poetry, or even the decorating of the house in which she lives). Her work never ceases to raise questions about the notions of the authorship, or identity and originality, as seen in the ironic emphasis on the repetition of the letter J, the initial of her last name, which becomes the seal of a personal copyright. The characters and motifs of Jotta’s drawings seem to have directly escaped from a fable or a comic strip whose story line has been lost. Appropriating and decontextualizing models from children’s colouring books on another scale, or making drawings of cartoon characters run along the walls of exhibition spaces (like that of Krazy Kat by George Herriman, with absurd scenes of violence), Jotta develops a satirical, poetic universe that mixes humour, oddities and corruption.

Text by Lilou Vidal