Ostera, Andrea

Andrea Ostera was born in Salto Grande, a town in the Province of Santa Fe, in 1967. She completed her undergraduate studies at the National University of Rosario and in 1992 moved to New York (USA) to participate in the General Studies in Photography program at the International Center of Photography. After this experience, she returned to Rosario and began working on a long-term project in which she dispensed with the camera, experimenting with contact prints and object projections onto sensitive material. In the exhibition "Ritual de lo habitual" (Centro Cultural Bernardino Rivadavia, Rosario, 1994), she presented the first works of this process. For this work, she was invited to be part of the Argentine delegation to Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie (Arles, France) in 1996 and the I Mercosur Biennial (Porto Alegre, Brazil) in 1997. That same year, she received a creation grant from the Antorchas Foundation and First Honorable Mention in the Braque Prize. In 1998, she held two solo exhibitions: "Fotogramas" at the Fotogalería del Centro Cultural General San Martín in Buenos Aires, and "Conciso, sucinto, preciso" at the Centro Cultural Bernardino Rivadavia in Rosario. From 1997 to 1999, she participated in the Kuitca Scholarship. Part of the production from these intense years was exhibited in "Ojo al país" (Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, 1999). Shortly after, she traveled to the USA to pursue postgraduate studies in Fine Arts at New York University, funded by the Fulbright/National Arts Fund scholarship. In 2001, she returned to Argentina; the following year, she received the Konex Foundation Diploma of Merit. Her research on the photographic medium, its conditions, limits, and possibilities has been the main focus of her projects. "11 operaciones combinadas" (Diego Obligado Galería de Arte, Rosario, 2019), "Persona" (Centro Cultural Kirchner, Buenos Aires, 2018), "Affaire" (Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, Buenos Aires, 2017), "+room" (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario, 2016), and "Capturas de Pantalla" (Mal de Archivo, Rosario, 2016) are among her most recent solo exhibitions. In 2018, Ediciones Diego Obligado published a monographic book about her work: "Andrea Ostera. Obras/Works 1994-2017." Her artistic practice extends beyond the production of artwork: since 1998, she has been teaching and managing at the Manuel Musto Municipal School of Visual Arts; from 2005 to 2010, she curated the Emerging Photography program at the Centro de Expresiones Contemporáneas (CEC) in Rosario; from 2005 to 2013, she worked on restoring the negatives archive of the Museo de la Ciudad de Rosario. Since 2019, she has been part of Camarada, a collective in charge of Pequeña Biblioteca – Photography Publications in Rosario.