Marcela Díaz: En Trama
March 20 - May 29, 2010
Opening Night Reception: Saturday, March 20, 7-10pm

Cara and Cabezas Contemporary is pleased to present the exhibition Marcela Díaz: En Trama, Textile Sculpture from Mérida, Yucátan, on view from March 20 through May 29, 2010. Paulo Cabezas, gallery director, met Marcela Díaz at the Havana Biennial in March 2009. Less than a year later, Magdalena Garcia, Director of El Museo Latino, in Omaha, Nebraska, obtained permission from the Cultural Institute of Yucatán to allow the exhibition, En Trama, to travel to Kansas City, Missouri before its journey to the west coast. You are invited to attend the opening on Saturday, March 20 at 7 pm at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary.

En trama translates to “in weft,” referring to the traditional Mexican sisal weaving process used by Díaz. Working from her studio in Merída, Yucátan, the artist creates free-standing sculptures that challenge our notions of weaving. Díaz is clearly adept at the craft of weaving: she uses the roughness of her materials (henequen, coconut, and other indigenous fibers from the Yucátan) with care, shaping them to her design without denying them personality. Her work foregrounds the very concept of weaving: Díaz's objects weave seduction with repulsion, old techniques with modern forms, soft with rough, the familiar with the obscure, the natural with the synthetic. The colors are vivid but natural; deep reds, cornflower blue, and ochre. The result of these peculiar combinations are objects, with unclear origins and purposes, whose very appeal is in their mystery.

Exhalation II seems human in scale (nearly four feet tall) and composition: it stands upright, tapered and imperfect, and emits strings of thorns in an ambiguous expression of pain, disgust, abundance, or celebration. In Exhalation III, similar strands of red-orange fiber recall growing hair, or fluids escaping from a wound. These expressions, Díaz implies, are exhalations: necessary, daily, rhythmic. This undoubtedly mirrors her artistic practice of weaving unrefined and rough materials by hook or hand. Díaz's mastery is her ability to make these objects seem casual. One has thorns, and both are supported by steel frames. In spite of these rigid and unforgiving materials, the viewer can imagine shaping these objects: folding and unfolding their edges, arranging their woven strands, shaping their forms like wet clay on a pottery wheel. There is something playful in this imagining that further complicates the Exhalations.

While the works described above seem to emerge from the very ground upon which they sit, several of the works in the exhibition are suspended in midair. Infancy, created in three different colors: red, green, and white, is comprised of thousands of strands of cotton string woven by hand into thick braids. Tied to the end of each string is a miniature, white, plastic baby doll. Suspended above small pools of the baby doll multiples, the braids appear active, as if caught in a cycle of production, sloughing, and regeneration.

By creating non-functional objects through a typically utilitarian process of weaving, Díaz stirs up more questions of origin, purpose, and meaning than she provides answers. The symbolism at play resists heavy-handedness and remains open to interpretation. By providing a platform for inquiry, Díaz draws us into her process of weaving. Our audience experience is woven together with her artistic process in an object that is alluring and disarming.

Marcela Díaz was born in 1961 in Merída, Yucátan, México, where she currently lives and works. She studied sculpture and design at the Gruber Jez Foundation in Cholul, Yucátan, México. Recent solo exhibitions of her work include: En Trama, El Museo Latino, Omaha, Nebraska, 2008; Dialogs, Domingo Perez Piña Gallery, Campeche, Campeche, México, 2006; Textura-Form-Space, Yucátan Visual Arts Center, Merída, Yucátan, 2006; and Conversations, The Gallery, Merída, Yucátan. Díaz represented México at the 10th Havana Biennial in Havana, Cuba in 2009.

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