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Maria Ezcurra, Baroque, 2010

Abiertas (Open) is an ongoing project in the Ste. Catherine Street Vitrines in which Maria Ezcurra will be creating a textile installation through a sequence of collaborative actions. Throughout the duration of the show different people from the Concordia community (graduate and undergraduate students, teachers, people working in the gallery, the library, counseling, security, etc) will be invited to come to the vitrines wearing a garment specifically chosen to be transformed into a sculpture. Twice a week Ezcurra will add a person’s garment to the wall, gradually transforming the configuration and identity of the space until the end of the show.

This installation intends to be simultaneously attractive and critic, exploring through the use of clothing both personal and social identities. Ezcurra will convert the collaborators’ clothes into structures that contain their body’s absence for talking about the role that their presence plays in the university. Ezcurra basses this work on the idea that garments are an every-day symbolic, aesthetical and even plastic element that attempts to connect the body with the social tissue, while at the same time it has the effect of isolating it. Dress for her is a form of communication; therefore, as a system of meanings, our clothes generate intuitive knowledge in most users and spectators: we all read them symbolically, connecting individual knowledge with culturally produced ideas. This work is a kind of metaphor about the society in which we live today, with its contradictions between social and individual, protection and image, beauty and comfort, consumerism and humanism, male and female, violence and indifference.

Bio

Born in 1973, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Maria Ezcurra lives and works in Mexico City. Currently she is coursing a PhD in Art Education at Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada. Ezcurra creates whimsical sculptures, wall works, and installations using materials such as women’s stockings and swimsuits that reference the human body and utilize outerwear as a representation of the inner self. She studied at the Visual Arts School (ENAP) in the National Autonomic University of Mexico, received a master’s degree in visual arts at the Chelsea School of Art in London and completed coursework at the San Francisco Art Institute. A recipient of the Fulbright scholarship, and multiple FONCA programs, Ezcurra has participated in more than 50 group and 10 individual exhibits in the Netherlands, Greece, Australia, the United States, England, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Mexico. Additionally, she has installed her works as outdoor sculptures in Mexico City, London, Caracas and San Francisco. Currently, she is a member of the Creator’s National System (SNC), and she teaches at the Autonomic University of Morelos Sculpture Workshop. Major exhibitions include 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece (2009), Hecho en casa, Museum of Modern Art, Mexico (2010), Superficies del deseo, MUAC, Mexico (2010), Despuntadas, Kunsthaus Santa Fé, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (2008), Me visto, por lo tanto existo, Museo de la Indumentaria, UCSJ, Mexico City (2007), Altares de muertos, Muros, Cuernavaca, Mexico (2006), Nostalgia of the Body, Firstsite, Colchester, England (2005) and Defecto común/identidades en disolución, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (2010).

Links

mariaezcurra.com

Reviews

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