Untitled (Four Mirrors Project I)

2018

Putting a Gesture to Sound
Mobile curtain-skirt, circular bleachers, needle work with flower-shaped texts, mask with butterfly cocoons, color video
 

Fritzia Irízar investigates the ways capital (work, money, merchandise) circulates and how they affect the mechanism for the production of the work of art. The artist’s aim, as she herself explains, is to “explore the limits of artistic disciplines and to trespass areas of knowledge.” Her work often “implies research into the real context as it studies social, political, economic, and ethical issues.” The artist not only addresses questions of collective interest, but also personal experiences that involve both the intellect and the body.
 

Her project for the Cuenca Biennial consists of a staging located in an ambiguous space between representation and hypothetical reality. Irizar creates a circular stage that is covered by a giant skirt of the sort worn by indigenous women from Cuenca, its fabric acting as a sort of curtain. Underneath the curtain-skirt, a video shows a character performing subtle movements with a mask-rattle made out of bells and butterfly cocoons, an element common in the deer dance of northern Mexico. The work calls attention to the sculptural dimension of the skirt and to the rhythmic and ritual way it moves over the women’s bodies. As it embroiders sexist expressions in the place of the flowery trimming normally found on the garment, the work turns into a condemnation of discriminatory practices and discourses.