Anirays Camino Biography
Anirays Camino (b. 1981) is a Venezuelan photographer based in Miami, Florida. Camino developed a distinctive visual narrative by combining her passion for aerial photography with handmade installations that recreate imaginary worlds.
Since 2012, Camino has been creating photo-based artworks, which have been exhibited primarily in the U.S. In 2015, Camino had a private solo show sponsored by the prestigious fine house jewelry Cartier in Miami's Design District in support to Big Brother Big Sister’s Miracle Society Organization. That same year, she participated in Macaya Gallery & Hoerle-Guggenheim collaborative exhibition project ArtCeleration, among major established artists including Retna. Her work was also featured at Maman Fine Art’s group show and Curator’s Voice Art Project during Miami Art Basel 2015, . Most recently, Camino participated in a group exhibition with renown visual artist Domingo Zapata called Art Intervention during New York’s Fashion Week 2016 at the Gansevoort Hotel in Meatpacking District.
Camino has collaborated with remarkable organizations such as Big Brothers Big Sisters' Annual Benefit Auction (2015) and the Fisher Island Annual Gala (2015).
In 2015, The Visual Arts Faculty selected her work to be shown at Miami’s International University of Art & Design Gallery where she is currently doing a Visual Arts Master of Fine Arts (MFA) with a focus on photography.
Artist Statement
My work begins with the image captured from an aerial perspective or overview. This allows seeing the space as a whole, as if each photograph represented an entire world perspective.
Afterwards, over the printed photograph, I place the miniature figures lining up to follow a path, a direction that leads to a fixed spot or goal. The figurines represent humans; they are a metaphor for humanity leading their steps towards different points or directions, that allude the roads we’ve all taken to achieve those objectives.
Not everyone has the same aspirations; therefore in some scenarios there are several lines that go in different directions depending on how people identified themselves. But before that, we are all lost in the crowd trying to figure out where we want to go, and what’s the best way to do it. We often use other people’s life as reference, they who have achieved those goals; we replicate the process by reflecting in our actions what others have done. As if recurring a pattern to be followed, that is nowhere written or tangible, it is simply a repetition. That is why I use successive series of figurines lining up together in the different lines of goals.
There are three visual moments connecting in one piece. The one that creates the world with a frontal perspective, then the moment when the action is developed through the installation, and finally when the previous two are connected by capturing the staged narrative that perpetuates in the created artwork. That is the end result of photography.
The name of the work "Imaginary Worlds" is derived from the various associations that occur in each viewer. The work is open and everyone imagines something different depending on whatever is his or her interior imaginary world.
In the end, life is a journey we all travel in different forms and spaces. As we explore and connect our path in one direction or the other, our sense of life becomes clearer and defined. My work is the philosophical expression of my own search.