BIRDS IN MY HEAD
SOLO EXHIBITION : MARIFÉ NÚÑEZ
Critic Text: Patricia Bueno
The idea of this project revolves around an introspective and sensitive, intimate fiction that explores the evolution of the stages of a woman’s life from a modern perspective, with the idea of female empowerment in the search for gender equality at its core.
The exhibition is conceived as a personal reflection of the artist herself, a projection of the psyche of today’s woman, crystallising desires, wishes and goals common to all, which she deals with in a metaphorical way, while denoting a show of affection for what she has already achieved from her vital perspective, all from aesthetic criteria, with a broad coherence and an absolutely contemporary sense of beauty which in turn respects the classical artistic canons.
In its configuration, the work of Marifé Nuñez reflects the hegemony of the self, a compendium of visions in which critical thought and sudden idea are combined in a way that gives power to the voice of the human subconscious as a focus of wills, and leads to a common message about the evolution of the prototype of the current woman of our context, with which the author identifies herself: determined and curious and active.
Visually, the exhibition consists of two installation pieces, a video-creation and a series of two-dimensional portraits (titled with the phrase that gives the project its name) made with mixed media. This series consists of female images
enveloped in an acid and chimerical spectral halo that contains a great symbolic charge. The different birds that crown the women she portrays are symbols of facets that the artist wants to highlight. Strength, freedom or money, beauty, creativity or success, among others, are concepts that have been associated throughout history with the peacock, the hen or the flamingo.
On the other hand, the large neon eye in these images reinforces this idea and takes it to a more transcendental, mystical level, alluding to the evolution of the human being to something superior, almost transhuman, which reinforces the link with the spectator and brings the image to life, as if in some way this effigy had the capacity to observe the observer.
The protagonists of these images have a certain regal air as if they were Zurbarán’s “portrait of the divine”. They are normal women with attributes that lead them to become an exalted version of themselves. This series, of great presence in the exhibition, is undoubtedly a desire for survival and reaffirmation which is made manifest through the use of the portrait as an emblem of power charged with intention, as “they represent, in some way, warrior women, Napoleonic, of the period, with bearing and symbolism”, in the words of the author herself, but she does so by taking it to her own terrain.
Plastically, this series is resolved by means of different languages. The use of photography, collage, painting or the installation of light manages to revise the genre in a brave way.
A direct and reflexive art full of honesty and strength, which gives great importance to atmospheres, electrifying and artificial, fictitious, that recreate a dreamed, desirable and utopian world to inhabit today, between poetry and illusion.
Curated by Patricia Bueno.
Artista colaborador: Yeyo Arguéz
