STATEMENT

A galaxy composed of planets, shooting stars and tears introduces us to a cosmos of dualities in which Mariana's work orbits. Fragile and durable, finite and eternal, porcelain and steel. With her work, the artist seeks to materialize the physical and emotional cycle of life: birth, death and reintegration into the universe. Her constellations are passing feelings that remain frozen, petrified, but continue to pulsate.

 

In the center of the room, through a portal, we are transported to her ceramic and electrochemical processes laboratory, where the artist investigates, experiments and creates. For her, working with materials extracted from the earth is a reminder of our connection with the universe and that we are all made up of the same chemical elements. Taking a piece of the earth, sculpting it, and subjecting it to high temperatures to create a permanent change in the earth's matter is one way to give meaning to your existence. She then becomes like the demiurge, a deity of Platonic philosophy, not who knows herself to be a creator, but rather who knows herself to be the conductor of transformations. It is his hands, his knowledge and sensitivity that use matter and energy to carry out a contemporary alchemy, where he makes evident to us phenomena that have always been there, that have been part of nature and that through his technique makes us marvel at them.

 

My grave will also have flowers, they are pieces that remind us that, although the cycle of life is a constant spiral, there is a part of us that does not transcend us: what we believe we are, which has to do with our personality, our fears. existentials, our social relationships, our face and our history. Why should we be afraid of death if everything in nature and the world is dying and being reborn? In the end we are matter, matter that returns to the earth. Mushrooms are then souls that are reborn and return to the universe. Inside them there is organic matter that decomposes and on the outside they are immortalized, creating a game between the finite and the eternal.

 

We finish introducing ourselves to the artist's current aesthetics with a triptych of found landscapes. A panorama that is made up of a copper and zinc alloy (brass) to which tin is adhered through electrodeposition. These pieces create a horizon of mountains and clouds that become increasingly faint, making us lose ourselves in the horizon of the universe in which Mariana would like to live, which she creates with each of her pieces.

- Matías Bahena