Solo exhibition

Actos de fugas – Matilde Guerrero

🔩⚙️ Check out the documentary about the exhibition 🫧

Institutions, emissaries of the establishment, of order, of the "ought-to-be," of normalcy and organization, are depicted here as machines: castles, factories, cathedrals, fortresses, battalions, uniforms. Solid structures with a pervasive influence felt in daily life, they permeate and shape people's behavior, both on an individual level and within collective imaginaries and realities. These institutions simulate feelings of security, wealth, well-being, and order, infiltrating the vital rhythms of society. However, their actions and purposes bring colonial practices into the present. Through their permanence over time and from the highest echelons of power, they have achieved proliferation and adaptability.

Bubbles escape from the machines—some with airs of divergence and resistance, in search of refuge, protection, and aspirations for emancipation manifested in creative acts of care and support. Others, stemming from systemic privilege and with airs of radicalization, emerge with aligned and reaffirming discourses. The bubbles are efficient, yet fragile and fleeting, products of tensions between different densities. Their origin is the same, but what is their purpose? When they burst, they stimulate memory through the most evocative sense: smell. What do their scents provoke in our behavior toward certain people and situations? What influence do they wield? Do they generate rejection, attraction, fear?

The symbols contained in the drawings and machines, along with the fragrances of the bubbles, are devices that through associative exercises bring to the present personal and collective situations around work, money, gender, power, control, and violence.

Acts of escape. Exercises of resistance. Actions against gravity. Long-haul struggles. Futile efforts, vital efforts.

– Juan Fernando López (curator).

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In the ideation and execution of this project, the action line proposed by Plural for 2024 was taken into account: to work in collaboration with the inhabitants of the Barrios Unidos locality. The objective is to consolidate Plural as a cultural space that integrates into local dynamics, promoting the exchange of knowledge and services, thus generating support networks. For the production of the pieces in this project, Matilde Guerrero worked together with Tatiana and Carlos Rozo. Tatiana, a mechanical engineer, inherited her interest in craftsmanship from her father, and they are both starting Taller Industrial Crozot, a company dedicated to providing services and products in metalworking. The collaboration between the artist and the producers went beyond simply providing a service: Matilde, based on drawings and sketches, presented the general idea of the machines, while Tatiana was able to translate the two-dimensional plans into functional machines, suggested materials for their creation, and made annotations to the designs to adjust the pieces. Actos de Fugas highlights both the conceptualization of the project by the artist and the technical skill of the machinists.