Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Ernesto Salmerón  (Managua, Nicaragua, 1977) is a graduate in Social Communication at the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. He creates photography and video works, daringly combining documentary and video experimentation, and taking the political situation in Nicaragua as a starting point.

His works have been presented at festivals and exhibitions in many countries of the world. He won an award for his video series Documentos (Documents) at the 2nd Central-American Video Creation National Festival Inquieta Imagem, which was held at the Museum of Art and Contemporary Design (San Jose, Costa Rica, 2003). Documento 1/29 was screened in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the Video Art Biennale VIDEOZONE (2004). He also took part in the exhibition of Latin-American art TODO INCLUIDO, in Madrid, Spain (2004), and in the VI International Exhibition and Colloquium on Digital Art, in Havana, Cuba (2004). 

In the video that reconstructs the history of dictatorship in Nicaragua, he makes use of the editing process to highlight its historical and cultural aspects. The other two videos of the series, Documento 2/29 (2003) and Documento 3/29 (2003), were awarded honourable mentions at the IV Nicaraguan Visual Arts Biennale (Managua, Nicaragua, 2003), and at the 3rd Central-American Video Creation National Festival Inquieta Imagem (San Jose, Costa Rica, 2003).

With that same commitment to his work, Salmerón produced another ambitious project, an intervention in two stages. First, he photographed the Sandinistas during the celebration of the anniversary of the revolution in 2000, and then he came back to that same celebration in 2004 to deliver the photographs to the Sandinistas and record it on video. This intervention generated the disturbing documentary Auras of war: interventions within the Nicaraguan revolutionary public space (2004). Surprisingly, Salmerón was approached by some Sandinistas who did not like the images and thought he was trying to defame the memory of the Sandinista Revolution. Auras of war is a instigative documentary that reveals the complexity of current political situation in Nicaragua. This documentary was screened in 2004 at the V Caribbean Biennale (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), at the Visual Arts Biennale of the Central-American Isthmus (Panama), and at the Latin-American art exhibition TODO INCLUIDO, in Madrid. 

almerón also produced another political video, The dialogue in the glass and the change in the weather (2004), a subtle appropriation of TV images that acquire new meanings with the inclusion of texts. This video was screened in the exhibitions Punto sin plano - Emergente contemporáneo, at the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica (Managua, Nicaragua, 2004), and Produciendo realidad, at the Prometeo - Cultural Association for Contemporary Art (Luca, Italy, 2004). With a more educational character, and less experimental work, Salmerón created the documentary María Isabel Urrutia: golden citizen (2003) on the Colombian weightlifter who won a gold medal in Sydney Olympic Games (2000). This documentary was awarded second prize at the 2nd Telefestival Iberoamericano Video Joven OIJ, of the Ibero-American Association of Educational Television (Spain, 2004), and was selected for the 5th Documental International Exhibition in Bogotá, Colombia (2003).