Glamour
To enter into this immersive work is to step inside the exaggerated world of the telenovela. The home, installed in the gallery complete with lounge, dining room and bedroom, is a profusion of lurid colour and plastic glamour.
Representation
This is not an actual home, but a TV one, with fakeness emphasised. Calero makes no attempt to hide the gallery’s industrial ceiling and the visitor will find that all the props are stuck down, as well as a monitor showing Calero using the set to film.
Violence
The eagle-eyed viewer will notice a gun placed casually on a table next to the lounge sofa: its inclusion nods to a darker side of the dramas, one in which the depicted violence is not such an irregular occurrence in the lives of its Venezualan viewers.
Satire
Yet these soap operas are so over-the-top that they become unintentionally comic. Colero plays up to cliches about national identity to such an extent they become absurd. She is, in essence, a satirist.
