01 Jul María Mascaró
July 2021
Resilience – Work in progress
During the two-month residency with AADK Spain, I want to work on the concepts of “the veiled” and “the resilience” in relation to Blanca’s people.
Resilience or fortitude is the ability to adapt to adverse situations with positive results and have the ability to face adversity.
In the time that I have been in the residence, there have been meetings with women whose stories are an example of this ability.
With this theme in mind, I found in Blanca plants born from rocks or marble that function as a metaphor for the term resilience. In the heat and aridity of this rocky environment, a plant is born that despite the difficulties manages to survive and grow -like Blanca’s women.
August 2021
Glazes – Installation-
Stone and textile
The latest body of work of María Mascaró is about “resilience”, a term that defines the ability to overcome traumatic situations. She is interested in approaching this term from a social perspective, in particular, the history of women whose examples of resilience seem to be inexhaustible.
By moving to Blanca to generate new expressions of her research, she discovers stories and myths that tell us about patriarchal and colonial struggles that not only gave the town its name, but which values, as in most of our societies, have permeated in the personal relationships sustaining the privileges of some with the sacrifice of others.
Mascaró has spoken with many women from Blanca who have shared with her their stories of struggle and care, often based on inequalities.
For this exhibition, María presents an installation composed of two busts installed on a stone staircase that is blocked by a wall. The busts carry two veils that allude, in our culture, to the initiation of life as a woman – once handcuffed- and her withdrawal from the enjoyment of life through mourning.
The veils are interwoven with hundreds of stones that literally tell us about the burden that many women carry throughout their lives, still today.
