Small great characters
Buenos Aires Photo Fair
2008

Small great characters is a series of 5 large format photographs, where I make self-portraits disguising myself as festive characters to commemorate the Fatherland in Argentina. These costumes are used by children and are precarious in their materiality: cardboard, cheap fabrics and plastics. The series presents 5 male characters that in “the beginning of the country” have played an important part in the construction of society: the knight, the sailboat, the lamplighter, the realist, the grenadier.

The designation of participation in an act, roles, visibility and activation on the stage are issues that have interested me to make this series. I am the same character that embodies all those roles that respond to all social strata, and with the help of humor I show how much weight institutional designation has to give you a role (or not) and therefore grant you a participation in a scene (or not). 

– Gabriel Chaile