Marisa Maza. 15sqm

About

As a media artist she produces works with video, photography and drawings about themes like sexuality and identity, social and political conditions of people and their communication with the system. Marisa Maza has also curated several exhibitions.

The works presented from the exhibition “cara(a)cara/face to face” are an example of the world inside and outside Marisa Maza, regarding the theme of the migration of women from Latin America to Europe.

Her deep and inspecting look, showing several situations placing the body at the centre of her research in a political context,: “There is a theme that I’m interested in, the freedom of body, watched as in an abstract level in its several horizons, from the political one to the technological”.

The body is the cornerstone of the project, women’s bodies related to the space. An existential relationship with the space, with the time, the free time revealed to the viewer: a group of women living in a small apartment of the Madrid downtown open their private space to create a public poll about the change of their lives, too far from their country, too close to each other to release their struggle.

Using the bird prospective to portray the women, she caught in a delicate way their private moments, lying on the bed sleeping, thinking, relaxing. Intimate time, as in <15sqm> of 2007, shared with the other roommates: everything happens in this 15 sqm. Using quotations of their stories, their opinions and personalities come out in a chorus: about how deep personal emotion can be felt but, as in a Greek tragedy, with the backdrop of a chorus voice that underlines the leitmotiv of the precarious financial and emotional existence of the group, as in “Alle zusammen”.

“Sometimes the girls go out and I can stay alone watching television. I like that, I can tune out. I can also call my son from the telephone booth. I feel that this is my space, where I can be myself with nobody looking at or criticizing me. Besides, it is not safe without papers and this is my place”.

Simple words, simple strokes. The thick black lines of profiles define the shape of the body in a quick and continuous movement that donates energy and power to the composition as the few burning colours and the lack of depth. The look is concentrated on the delicate expression of the girls and their positions but the whole context can’t be washed away.