Category Archives: contemporary art

Cecilia Paredes’s Faces in the Wallpaper

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Art Noveau, 2009 and left, Chrysanthemum, 2009


These photographs by Cecilia Paredes trick the eye by seeming to be floral wallpaper, then encourage a deeper look when you realize a person is there. The Peruvian artist paints and photographs herself to blend into her linen backdrops. Paredes states,

“I wrap, cover or paint my body with the same pattern of the material and ‘re–present’ myself as part of that landscape. Through this act, I am working on the theme of building my own identification with the entourage or part of the world where I live or where I feel I can call home. My bio has been described as nomadic so maybe this is also a need of addressing the process of constant relocation. There is also the factor in my mind that flora as we know it, is coming to be endangered so with all these preoccupations, I think that in these works, aesthetics bind with the anthropologic in order to register fragments of personal and social memory.”

To me, it speaks of women’s decorative role in society, their being told to be quiet and blend in, and here the artist blends with disquieting force.

Nocturne, 2009

Mayan Clothes, Contemporary Painters

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The show Panaramico de la Plastica Yucatanese at the Center for Visual Arts in Merida, with its focus on contemporary Yucatan artists, caught me by surprise by including many pieces of women, specifically in traditional Mayan costumes.

Carol Acereto, Belleza indigena, 2008

Having been in Merida about a month now, I would no longer make the mistake of thinking the artist is idealizing the past–rather it expresses an opinion about a changing present. Acereto’s painting features young girls in traditional Mayan dress, white embroidered around the square neckline. Even today in Merida women wear the traditional white shift dress to go about their lives, as do Mayan women who come into Merida for the markets. Surprisingly, perhaps, I also see younger women wearing a top in the same style with jeans–is traditional Mayan dress as in vogue as a t-shirt?

Sandra Nikolai, Chismorreo en el mercato yucateo, 2009

Sandra Nikolai’s women you might see at any market, which is as frenetic as the scene above suggests, and the colors remind me of the brightly-painted buildings. The florid palette and bustling brush strokes make sense to me after walking through the sensory cacophony of the markets.

Sandra Nikolai, Otra garnachita, 2009

A tortilla maker? Whatever little street food is being made, the artist treats the subject with dignity and I love the strong lines of the hand. It seems like the Mayan heritage is being explored, and valued positively, in these works. As a middle-aged man on the street told me yesterday, Spanish was his second language–Mayan his first, and his village an hour outside of Merida continues to make hammocks as its industry.

Jaime Barrera, Homenaje a Cy Twombly, 2009

On the other hand, he spoke fluent English and worked as a waiter at a restaurant called Main St. It’s a changing world. A homage to one of my favorite painters hung in the show as well, which overall testified to a variety of influences and interests among contemporary Yucatan painters.

Magdalena Murua: Can you spot Archie?

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Magdalena Murua, Constellation

I can’t. The serpentine pattern created here seems inextricably entangled, and the various colors are muted by the white background and the small size of the circles. Done with comic book paper punched into tiny holes, the artist creates compositions with thousands of tiny circles. Murua had a few works up at Pulse art fair in the same vein. At times the comic book source material is more prominent, but here it is subsumed in the form, and I quite like the overall effect.