The work of Carmen Mariscal and Mercedes Gertz, two Mexican visual artists with transnational careers, invites us to question the conventional narratives and identities related to gender and place, and gives art a decisive role in revealing the complexities that these markers veil, opening up new readings and vital and affective possibilities. In their work, the process of interaction with their human and spatial context is as important as the product, a product that refers to the imprints of personal and collective memory, alluded and interrogated by their recourse to diverse materials and media, including paper, cloth, yarn, photography, video, ceramics, wire, lead, resin and sound. The transposition, intervention and combination of these elements in unexpected ways, allows them to place images into play in manners that subvert their original identity and open up spaces for the activation of the imagination and for critical reflection on the social, historical and cultural myths that they embody.
The body, principally the female body, and in some cases their own bodies—or those of their families and collaborators, or even our own bodies—become a fundamental reference for their work, underlining the fact that the personal is political, and that we position and reposition ourselves continually in relation to the world through our senses and corporeal consciousness, by means of gestures that carry layers of meaning under which we may decide to hide; or alternatively, we may interrogate them, allowing doubts and enigmas to become visible, and fostering an awareness of the complex family and cultural genealogies in relation to which we constantly articulate ourselves. By means of visual metaphors and poetic and performative strategies, Mariscal and Gertz present us with decodifications of their subjective experience that are unsettling, but also liberating—opening up the possibility of dismantling the power relations and histories of violence that are imbricated in our material culture and in the spaces with which we interact, making present and palpable the need to re-present and re-narrate them, in order to imagine another future, both in personal and social terms.
Karen Cordero Reiman
I. Carmen Mariscal
In the installation El amor en vértigo (1997, reproduced 2015) and the photographic series Coiffes (2013), Carmen Mariscal uses her own body as an instrument to talk, through its conjunction with objects and the documentation of private performances, about the complex emotions and the conflicts that are hidden behind archetypes of social identity and symbols of female power. In the installation, which forms a part of the series La novia puesta en abismo, she incorporates her great-grandmother’s wedding dress, which she inherited, together with a series of images hung in a palimpsestic manner. These reveal, through the gestures of her body and the dress itself, the different states of affection and subjection that form a part of the myth of the happy bride, and are transmitted from one generation to another, relegating desire and self-determination to a second plane. In Coiffes, originally produced as part of a creative dialogue with two other women artists, Mariscal fashions a variety of headgear out of barbed wire, a material that, as she puts it, “represents for me the border between countries, between people, between the interior of the body and the exterior, between the myths we believe in and the reality we live”. She is photographed putting them on and taking them off, making evident again through her gestures, the pain and suffering these dichotomies produce and reproduce.
Love is vertigo
(from the series The Bride Mise en Abîme) A/P
5 black and white photographs printed in Dura Clear, mirror and the artist’s great-grandmother’s wedding dress. 180 x 90 cm each photograph and also the mirror, the dress is human scale. 1997, re-edited in 2015.
Coiffes (Headdresses)
9 black and white photographs taken during the private performance created for the publication of the book Autoritratto by artists Eleonora Aguiari, Carmen Mariscal and Rebecca Dolinsky. 40 x 30 cm each. 2013, printed in 2018
II. Mercedes Gertz
“Art has the power to construct and deconstruct an idea, giving it a body and a form”.
Mercedes Gertz
The series Nymphas dissolutio and the piece titled Guadinche by Mercedes Gertz use a montage of images gleaned from both personal archives and mass media, in order to deconstruct and reconfigure the archetypes of femininity that are perpetuated by patriarchal society, and to propose new, independent and self-determined possibilities of identity that both in their content and in their form suggest new narrations and modes of embodiment. In the case of Nymphas dissolutio (2010 and after), on the basis of fragments of wedding photographs donated to the artist by friends whose marriages ended in divorce, she constructs new representations (with the collaboration of Nancy Louise Jones) that resemble mandalas and flowers, using collage and its digital transposition and photographic impression on silk. This visual, spatial and gestural resemantization (which alludes to a philosophical, social and corporeal repositioning) transforms the meaning of the representations associated with failed relationships, and integrates them into new compositions in which they acquire different affective connotations, when they are put into dialogue with the experiences and stories of other women, and into configurations that suggest distinct, autonomous life paths.
In a similar manner, in Guadinche (2012), Gertz combines in a single image two polarized archetypes of womanhood with deep roots in Mexican society—the Virgin of Guadalupe and la Malinche, the pure woman and the fallen woman—in order to present the complexity of a female life dominated by stereotypes and their consequences. The visual montage alludes to the possibility of constructing a personal identity on the basis of the deconstruction of idealizations and the search for equilibrium founded on self-reflection and dialogue, endowing the post-revolutionary concept of a hybrid or mestiza Mexican identity with new implications, from a critical perspective that breaks with the subject-object dichotomy.
Nymphas Dissolutio in collaboration with Nancy Louise Jones. 2010-2018
Installation of mandalas
11 digital prints on paper
Framed 30 x 30 cm
Nymphas Dissolutio in collaboration with Nancy Louise Jones.
2010-2018
Handkerchiefs
Digital print on silk
Each 16 x 16 cm
Nymphas Dissolutio in collaboration with Nancy Louise Jones.
2010-2018
Universes
(The Beginning, Mexico Universe, Europe Universe)
3 digital prints on silk
Each 85 x 130 cm
Guadinche
Digital print on rayon
180 x 110 cm
2012
III. Mercedes Gertz
“The roles that have been inaccessible to women in real life become simply costumes in an absurd theatrical hierarchy of sweaters”
Mercedes Gertz
The Hierarchy Sweatersproject (2016-2017) by Mercedes Gertz has a process-oriented and performative character that addresses social space and awareness on a number of levels. Through a series of actions, she represents the ways that bodies are invested with power along the lines of a dichotomic conception of gender, which is symbolized through different modes of dress: three black sweaters that represent instances of male power—religious space (through a priest’s collar), political space (through a judge’s collar) and social hierarchy (through the collar of a colonial aristocrat)—while the fourth sweater, light brown in color, represents the nude, vulnerable female body. The design of the garments is based on a series of drawings in which Gertz gave form to dream images, and they were produced by the Stitching Borders group located in Los Angeles, that works with migrant women using knitting as a therapeutic vehicle and a catalyst for the construction of a community founded on dialogue. Then the sweaters were put into play in public space, through actions in which various women wore them while circulating in different urban and rural locations in the US, Mexico and Switzerland, symbolically inhabiting the distinct spaces of empowerment and disempowerment to which they refer.
This process, in turn, was documented in photographs and videos that depict the diverse scenarios and interactions produced by these actions, and register the vital experience narrated by the artist and the group of women who collaborated with her on this project, among them Elizabeth Beristain and Lourdes Valdés. In addition to the photographs of the performance and the videos that record the process of the work through images and interviews with the participants, Gertz created a series of “black boxes” (which allude to the black boxes on airplanes that guard a secret version of what has occurred during their trajectories) in which the artist adds to the glass placed over the photographs images and words that express the subjective experience the women narrated regarding their feelings while using the sweaters. These interventions, in turn, are echoed and extended by the ominous shadows they cast on the photographs and frames, evoking the various possible levels of meaning of those affective experiences that we rarely make conscious and articulate.
Hierarchy Sweaters
in collaboration with
Elizabeth Beristain, Los Ángeles, California
Lourdes Valdés, Ciudad de México
Stitching Borders, Los Ángeles, California
2018
4 sweaters, handmade in cashmere
The Walks
2 m 12 sec
2018
Participants:
Carolina Recher, Cecile Lartigue, Laura Hinton, Martina Sexton, Ariadna Castrejón, Andrea Puente, Kitzia Jiménez O’Farril, Amada Cadaval, Sofía Mitre, Sandra Pani, Sonia Hernández, Alma Ruiz, Azul, Sonia Carroz, Gris, Lucia.
Collaborators:
Echo Theohar, Samantha Sotelo, Daniel Bally
Suéteres de la jerarquía
En colaboración con
Elizabeth Beristain, Los Ángeles, California
Lourdes Valdés, Ciudad de México
Stitching Borders, Los Ángeles, California
2018
• Photographs and stills from documentary videos of the sweaters in use, mounted on acrylic. Each 40 x 50 cm or 50 x 40 cm, depending on their orientation.
The Interviews
4 m 12 sec
2018
Participants:
Carolina Recher, Cecile Lartigue, Laura Hinton, Martina Sexton, Ariadna Castrejón, Andrea Puente, Kitzia Jiménez O’Farril, Amada Cadaval, Sofía Mitre, Sandra Pani, Sonia Hernández, Alma Ruiz, Azul, Sonia Carroz, Gris, Lucia.
Collaborators:
Echo Theohar, Samantha Sotelo, Daniel Bally
Hierarchy Sweaters
Black Boxes
12 photographs mounted on black boxes with pink enamel writing on glass22 x 28 cm, depth 5 cm
IV. Carmen Mariscal
“We all go through life burdened by the power and weight of memories. My intention is to show the power that these memories wield over us, and to make visible these invisible memories”.
Carmen Mariscal
The installation The Beautiful Place by Carmen Mariscal (2014-2018) includes a variety of multisensorial elements that address the transformation of materials, in a complex construction that alludes to processes of memory, oblivion and repression, and their traces in objects and spaces, one of the main themes of Mariscal’s recent work. The work was developed through a practice that is closed linked to Mariscal’s experiences over the last few years in theatre design and constitutes a symbolic evocation of a wooded area in the north of France that was probably occupied by the German army in 1940. A castle of sorts, a nineteenth-century house with a tower, is located there at the edge of a thick forest of tall, ancient trees that evokes the imaginary of fairy tales.
Mariscal uses elements originating in or found in situ at this suggestive scenario—bedsheets, leaves, crystal decanter stoppers, etc.—to allude to the experiences of war that are imprinted on the spatial memory and the material culture of this place, experiences that have been repressed by the current inhabitants of the area and the descendants of the occupants of the “castle” in the last century. For example, she used the tattered bedsheets from the house to fashion a tower, embroidered with semi-legible sentences that refer to the secrets and contradictions that characterize the oral history regarding the site. In addition, she recreates the forest in her installation, constructing trees out of barbed wire and resin that embody a sense of foreboding and violence that has been shrouded in silence. On the floor, leaves reproduced in clay and bathed in lead evoke both the fragility of memory and the harshness of the experiences lived in this “beautiful place” (the title The Beautiful Place refers to the French name of the mansion: Belloy--in ancient French--or Beau Lieu), while the sound installation echoes phrases that allude to the fragmented memories that the piece makes present. Finally, cyanotypes reproduce the imprint of the leaves of the trees that witnessed a battle that took place on this site during World War II, in June 1940; they were created at the same hour and in the same place 75 years later and are displayed in light boxes as an insistent reminder –silent, subtle and gestural—of the trauma that has almost been erased from memory. In addition, an eloquent documentary film by Caroline Emmet-Bourgois invites us to observe the conceptual process of the piece and its production.
The Beautiful Place
Fores
5 trees made with 500 resin branches, 3200 m barbed wire and 5 steel tubes. Sound. 2018.
Sound: Sound design by Chloé Catoire, with the voices of Camille Japy and Alexander Blackburn, and the music Speculum Veneris by Gerhart Muench from the album Ramas by Mercedes Gómez Benet (harp), with permission of Mercedes Gómez Benet and José Luis Rivera, director of Quindecim Recordings. 2018.
The Beautiful Place
Tower
Tower made with old bedsheets, embroidered, and 90 resin sculptures inside. 180 cm high x 60 cm diameter. 2015.
The Beautiful Place
War Leaves
Cyanotypes
16 cyanotypes. Different sizes: 6 of 10 x 10 cm, 4 of 30 x 20.2, 6 of 30 x 22.7.
2015-2018
The Beautiful Place
War Leaves
Mural installation
64 leaves made in steel with photogravures. Different sizes: between 42 x 16 x 2 cm and 6.5 x 3.5 x 1 cm.
2015-2018
The Beautiful Place
War Leaves
Sculptures
18 sculptures in lead and ceramics. Different sizes: between 25 high x 68 diameter and 12 cm high x 22 cm diameter.
2018
Trailer of the documentary video by Caroline Emmet-Bourgois on the making of The Beautiful Place, 2018
PORTRAITS OF THE ARTISTS
Carmen Mariscalis a Mexican visual artist. Born in the US, in California, she lives and works in Paris, France. She holds a master’s degree in Visual Arts from the Winchester School of Art in England, a graduate degree in Painting from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and a BA in Art History from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. She works in different disciplines such as installation, sculpture, video, photography and theatre design. The recurrent themes in her work are fragility, confinement and memory. She is the author of the installation El pueblo creador for the Mexican Pavilion in the Universal Exposition in Hannover 2000. She was awarded first place in the IV National Competition of Installations in Mexico and has been selected for the Monterrey Biennial and other competitions. She has had individual and collective exhibitions in both public and private venues in Mexico, the US, Spain, France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Malaysia and Russia.
Mercedes Gertz, a Mexican artist, works in Mexico City; Los Angeles, California and Lausanne, Switzerland. She holds a BA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in New York, an MA in Fine Arts from the Otis School of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and a PhD in Depth Psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Bárbara, California. She was awarded a grant for young artists by the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA) in 1988. From 2001 to the present she has worked in community practice and given workshops on art as a language to Latino families in Los Angeles, California. She has also given workshops in Mexico, Los Angeles and Paris, focused on the study of dreams and fairy tales as a symbolic language that articulates aspects that words cannot express. Her paintings, conceptual installations and graphics have been exhibited in Mexico, the US and Europe. Her graphic piece Lotería de la Vida is part of the collection of the José Luis Cuevas Museum in Mexico City.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ana Lara and Isabel Alvarenga, thank you for having dreamed and conceived this exhibition.
The Beautiful Place by Carmen Mariscal is dedicated to Alexander, Maria, Julianand Charlotte (and also to their ancestors). Thank you for your love and your support.
For the spirit of Nymphas Dissolutio by Mercedes Gertz thanks to Martha.
I appreciate the love and support of Alejandro, Daniel, Patricio and Santiago.
CREDITS
Curator for MUMA and texts in Spanish and English: Karen Cordero Reiman
Photography: Claude Gaspert
This exhibition was first presented at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Paris from April 12th to May 31st, 2018.
A grant from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts through its Special Grants Program 2018 made possible the documentation of the exhibition and the editing of its catalogue, which was designed and printed by Oak Editorial (Gerardo Menéndez and Vania Velázquez).
Links to videos that document the exhibition at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Paris and the parallel public programs.
Interview Jordi Batalle Radio RFI (live and with images)
Curatorial walkthrough (May 31, 2018)
Walkthrough with Mercedes Gertz