El deseo aparece de repente

This exhibition poses a dialogue between the work of artists Karen Lamassone and Aurora Pellizzi based on a selection of photographs taken from the unpublished archive of the Cali artist and a series of textile pieces recently produced by Pellizzi.In the series of photographs, taken in different locations between 1978 and 1988, Lamassone explores from a very particular angle, her constant concerns about femininity and sexuality. The images, charged with an eroticism bordering on voyeurism, recreate ethereal and melancholic environments that, on this occasion, recall the production of American artist Francesca Woodman and the stories of amorous hauntings explored by the Caliwood movement with which Lamassonne is associated.“In these images endowed with a very particular poetics, in which the indiscreet gaze becomes the protagonist, the viewer becomes an active entity within the work itself. From this strategy of transposition between the lens, the photographer and the viewer, the boundaries between the private, the public, the erotic and the intimate fade away to give rise to a new landscape of desire.” Aurora Pellizzi’s work links textile traditions of Central and Southern Mexico with graphic motifs that stem from an imaginary of explicit feminine sensuality structured within a pop art influence that alludes to a dreamlike universe. Pellizzi has created a specific way of working the textile on the ayate grid that in a certain way is unprecedented, due to its volumetry, reminiscent of the material and perspective experiments of David Alfaro Siqueiros, in what the muralist called ‘plastic integration’.

In this sense, Pellizzi’s work is inscribed within a pictorial and sculptural tradition influenced by the genealogy of his place of work and residence -Mexico City- as well as the communities around the city, as in this case a cooperative of women embroiderers of the Otomí ethnic group in Temoaya. Pellizzi dyes and prepares her own materials using exclusively natural pigments such as cochineal, indigo, avocado and pericon (a ceremonial flower used in the autumn harvest celebrations associated with San Miguel and attributed to pre-Hispanic cults of Quetzacoatl) to obtain her color palette. These motifs are volumetrically woven into the textile weave of the ayate, a common pre-Hispanic garment in the Valley of Mexico hand-spun and hand-woven from maguey fiber, the sacred plant from which mezcal is produced. “The way Lamassonne approaches textile work is related to other languages such as fashion or cinema. Within the artist’s visual universe, her work in the film industry is of radical relevance and has tangentially influenced her entire practice. Due to the characteristics of producing from the periphery and trying to create a language of her own, the members of the film crew had diverse roles. In some of the films, Karen acted and also did the costumes and set design. These crafts related to manual labor are reflected in the textile sculptures of the hairy hands. These pieces, which allude to urban myths and childhood fears, are a direct critique of the negative forces that patriarchal societies disguise under the labels of popular culture.” BL Pellizzi, for his part, intertwines material experimentation with the myth of the Guadalupana. Her temple being the largest pilgrimage site in Latin America, where it is said that the Virgin appeared before the indigenous Juan Diego on an ayate flannel.

This is a foundational myth of Mexican identity that alludes to the pre-Hispanic figure of Tonantzin as the original goddess, supreme creator of the universe, in which the role of the feminine plays an important role, as Pellizzi challenges the “virginal” with images of an uninhibited femininity, in a kind of cult to feminine power and her creative and generative capacity. “Aurora’s work is enigmatic in that it brings together different traditions and generates a space of dialogue, sometimes antagonistic, between modern universalist geometries and the forms of bodies. These bodies that are mentioned, fragmented, recall the work of Karen Lamassone and her particular cinematographic gaze. Pellizzi’s framing can be seen as photograms or close-up sketches for a film shoot.” BLIn times of political instability, these themes of loneliness and enigmatic beauty make us reflect on the fall of patriarchy (how true is it?), the singularity of power associated with women in symbolic terms and its anthropological genealogy in relation to art; to the relationship of affections with the body, sexuality and the cult of beauty.Aurora Pellizzi was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up between New York and Mexico. She studied art at Cooper Union School in New York (BFA, 2010) and New York University (BFA, 2005). Her work has been exhibited in Colombia, France, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, England and the United States.

Karen Lamassone (1954) lives and works in Atlanta USA. Born in New York, she was educated in a multicultural and cosmopolitan environment between the Cauca Valley and Europe, from which her multifaceted work is nourished. Around her work in film, she articulates different media such as painting, photography or scenography. Watercolor is of significant importance in Lamassonne’s practice, since thanks to its formal qualities, it has allowed him to document his nomadic daily life. Her work has been exhibited at the Museo de la Tertulia in Cali, is part of the prestigious collection of the Museo del Banco de la Republica de Colombia and is part of the research Radical Women (Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Brooklyn Museum, New York and Pinacoteca, Sao Paolo). She is currently organizing a retrospective exhibition to be shown at the Swiss Institute in New York, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Medellin.Text by: Natalia Valencia Arango Beatriz Lopez 2022Curated by: Beatriz LópezMaría Paula Bastidas* Cooperative led by Ibeth Meliton. Ibeth, Margarita Librado, Valeriana Gutierrez, Maria de los Angeles Gonzalez, and Jaquelin Hernandez participated in the project.+571 3226703 • Cr 23 #76-74 • info@institutodevision.com • www.institutodevision.comInstituto de V