Branches and used makeup wipes, wooden sticks, hair, lacquer, wire, makeup, and reptile skin. Entangled, adjusted, and attuned. A thousand elements multiplied like a cell during mitosis, breaking free from each other and joining back together, from left and right, all at once. All these materials are witnesses to things apparently unpleasant: together, they are monstrous and fragile, but also beautiful. They are life lived through a kaleidoscope. A bit further, individual letters come together to build calligrams- an ornamental alphabet or a secret language can be intuitively perceived, working in tandem with every one of the names chosen for each creature to hold: Lananteterequismixgarlluón; Rasuntisanollamas, Raustrobunossi.
This exhibition shows a twofold process: an intuitive and material effort and a typographic, language-centered exploration. Forty-two creatures or uncanny organisms made over two years are composed into an installation. Alongside them, a series of graphic works explore the act of naming as an act of creation, of bringing these organisms into existence. This exploration further reveals the poetic process through which the creatures were named and the new language that sprung in consequence.
Relaciones Simbióticas is an ecosystem of relations wound up in affection, as well as an infinity of micro universes being unfolding like a symphony of waste material. Relaciones Simbióticas’ power lies in the possibility to perceive the non-perceivable as it interweaves residues of the feminine, animal, and natural universes. It thus requires a specific gaze from spectators, one interested in the language of objects and nature, and in the cries of the environment that are let out in an almost undetectable frequency. This work deals with an understanding of our environment not simply as what surrounds us, but as the tacit ties of affection, as the thousand butterfly effects and energies between you and me, as that which we are constantly unconsciously creating but refuse to see.
Text and curation,, Inés Arango 2021
