Liminal: Stretching the margins
Liminal : Étirer les marges
Liminal: Estirando los márgenes
2023
Project presented at Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (Curated by: ART/AROUND) and at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, Canada.
Project carried out with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts
Maria Ezcurra has seen a lot of suitcases and done a lot of packing and unpacking.
The suitcases she brings to the fore at Projet Casa were once functional objects and containers of human belongings and histories, now upcycled into a social and emotional metaphor. As personal baggage, they contain intimate traces of oneself, empty bodies filled with experiences and physical traces that bring back memories of home and change, of displacement, detachment, and familial ties/unties.
Maria’s once emptied shells that she collected all over the city now vibrate with a new, disturbing, yet familiar and enticing aura. Pantyhose and other materials are purposely confined within the empty vessel, stretched in unexpected forms, reminiscent of shed skin, their body absent, in stasis, simultaneously evoking morbidity and tacit sensuality. No words can express the foray of emotions that these material relics trigger when exposed. These are metaphors for contained, coerced bodies - whether physical or spiritual – their placement in a suitcase conveying a pulsion to be set free, while the stretched fabric implies resistance, friction and tension.
Negotiating these forces has been and still is Maria’s journey. Moving between countries since her childhood challenged her own concept of familiarity and comfort. Maria uses suitcases, emblems of transient mobility, which she transcends and transforms into powerful statements open to interpretation - on gender violence, identity building and immigration - thus stretching the margins. To keep her intention grounded, Maria uses stones and rocks that serve as symbolic and tangible anchors, representing the land she left behind and the new land that she now calls home. But the rocks also evoke her own solidity as a human being, unabashed in the midst of perturbation.
Maria’s resilience is cleverly and wittingly transposed in her choice of artistic medium. Pantyhose can stretch beyond its expected limits and still keep its original form, resistance, and essence. But the artist is in control and cleverly doses the tension, she is the Platonic demiurge, sculpting and morphing new matter, identities and associations and doing it with humor and tenderness. Her concoctions are titillating but also highlight the absurdity of our preconceptions about the material and their ludic transformation.
By keeping the luggage open, Maria exposes the flesh with no body, forcing us to confront the rawness of these intimate gendered displays, turning us into voyeurs. In fact, she purposely exercises this once fragile symbol of femininity, empowering it and sheltering it from any harmful gaze.
Maria makes connections. Her works, whether suitcases, site specific installations, or the Open series consisting of splayed-out textiles on the wall, are all linked by invisible threads that she uses to weave identities, human experiences and histories, hovering in between past and future, in a liminal state of imminent potentiality.
ART/AROUND: Laura Vigo and Iris Amizlev
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Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canadá
Photo: Mike Patten
Sculpture (suitcase, fabric, thread and stone)
119 x 41 x 41 cm
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Mike Patten
Sculpture (suitcase, fabric, thread and stone)
84 x 63 x 51 cm
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Mike Patten
Sculpture (briefcase, canvas, and thread)
51 x 56 x 51 cm
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Escultura (maleta, tela, hilo y piedra)
56 x 63 x 56 cm
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canadá
Foto: Mike Patten
Sculpture (suitcase, fabric, thread and stone)
51 x 53 x 51 cm
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Mike Patten
Sculpture (suitcase, fabric and thread)
51 x 53 x 51 cm
Photo: Maria Ezcurra
Sculpture (fabric/clothing, thread and metal)
193 x 76 x 76 cm
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Mike Patten
Sculpture (fabric/clothing, thread and metal)
193 x 76 x 76 cm
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Mike Patten
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canadá
Foto: Mike Patten
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canadá
Foto: Mike Patten
Installation (deconstructed clothing)
157 x 86 x 43 cm
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Mike Patten
Installation (deconstructed clothing)
84 x 89 x 36 cm
Projet Casa, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Mike Patten
Installation (recovered suitcases and metal structure)
211 x 185 x 147 cm
Photo: Maria Ezcurra
On-site installation, packaging materials
Photo: Mike Patten
On-site installation, packaging materials
Photo: Mike Patten
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Maria Ezcurra
Sculptures (suitcases, fabrics, threads and stones)
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Maria Ezcurra
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Maria Ezcurra
Sculptures (suitcases, fabrics, threads and stones)
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Maria Ezcurra
Sculptures (fabrics, threads, stones, and metal)
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Maria Ezcurra
Sculptures (fabrics, threads, stones, and metal)
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Maria Ezcurra
Sculpture (suitcase, fabric, threads and stones)
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Maria Ezcurra
On-site installation, packaging materials
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, Canada
Photo: Maria Ezcurra