Veronica Ruth Frias

Verónica Ruth Frías - Armed to teeth

Técnica: Foundry

Biografía del Artista: Verónica Ruth Frías (Spain, 1978) is a Spanish feminist contemporary artist based in Málaga. Her works are created through performances in which the body is subject to the work. She graduated in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Santa Isabel de Hungría in Seville. Appropriation, costume and tattoos are some of the tools she uses to place her body at the service of art and transform the personal into artistic practices. Sarcasm, irony and humour are fundamental for the artist, although she deals with very serious issues such as the construction of the feminine, motherhood, violence against women or discrimination against women in the history of art. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including Super M at the ECCO in Cádiz, Extra(ordinary) Narrations at the ABA Art Gallery in Palma de Mallorca and I love my mother a lot at the Tula Prins Gallery in Córdoba. She has received grants and awards such as the INICIARTE Production Grant from the Junta de Andalucía, the Rafael Botí Grant from the Rafael Botí Provincial Foundation for Plastic Arts in Córdoba, the DESENCAJA Prize for Plastic Arts in Málaga and the 10th Pepe Espaliú Plastic Arts Contest, also in Córdoba.

Armed to the teeth Veronica Ruth Frias in collaboration with Guillermo Saenz Armed to the Teeth (contemporary jewellery) is a piece conceived as wearable art and is born directly from Verónica Ruth Frías’ work of the same name, in which she reflected on the fear felt by many women; fear of walking alone, fear of being assaulted or fear of being attacked in the middle of the night for the mere fact of being women and not being accompanied. The work was formalised as a video installation, in which the central piece is a video of a disturbing Verónica with a fixed and impassive gaze, pointing directly at us with the barrel of a hunting shotgun. This powerful image is accompanied by a photograph of the shotgun as an archive and a series of objects for “personal” defence. The objects referred to – real objects belonging to real women – are used daily and can be carried in a bag or pocket, but at a given moment they can be used for self-defense. Women all over the world feel that instinctive fear that constantly looms over them, that heavy shadow of sexual aggression, and they often place a certain trust in some object that magically becomes a defensive weapon: a stone in the pocket, a pencil or keys held like a knife. These objects function as an archaeological vestige of the immediate present of women who, day after day, walk uncertainly through the world. From these objects, a collaborative project between the artist Verónica Ruth Frías and the jeweler Guillermo Sáenz arose, with the intention of decontextualizing the objects of the installation in a series of rings conceived as pieces of art. Five rings in which we can see the pencil, a stone, the front of a key, a thorn and a gun – as a visual metaphor for the video. Armed to the teeth (contemporary jewelry) is a set of rings made of sterling silver with a shiny silver finish, oxidized silver patina and 24 Kt gold plating. This generated set aims to take the work of art to that other place of exhibition, the body itself, which serves as a canvas, as a positioning and as a way of making visible a real problem that affects us as women.