Javier Tellez

I Am Happy Because Everyone Loves Me (Bedlam), 1999
Video instalation
Courtesy the artist

Javier Tellez was born in Valencia, Venezuela in 1969 and moved to New York in 1993. Solo exhibitions have been organized at Gasworks Gallery, London (1999), and at Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela (1996). His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Kwangju Biennale, Korea (2000), at Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (1997), at MercoSur Biennale, Porto Alegre, Brazil (1997) and at P.S.1’s International Studio Program (1994).

"'I am Happy Because Everyone Loves Me (Bedlam)' was made after a residency in London at The Royal Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital, commonly known as "Bedlam" since its foundation in the thirteen century. The installation includes a video projection that discloses training sessions of ‘restraint and control’ techniques performed by nurses of this institution, and a viewing room lined with nest boxes produced by inmates in the occupational therapy workshops.

The work maps the social space of the hospital through an architectural model that questions the absolute point of view implicit in the Cartesian logic of the gaze, as well as the instrumentalization of surveillance of Bentham’s panopticon. The viewers are positioned in an ambivalent space where the dyads, inside/outside, fiction/documentary and seeing/being seen, collapse."

Selected Bibliography

Kent, Sarah, "Javier Téllez," Time Out, December 8-15, 1999.

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