Sculpture

welded steel, light, molded plastic, fog machine, 29”x13”x12”, size of projection: variable

Las Madres Perdidas installation view, Mexican Museum, San Francisco, CA 2016
Las Madres Perdidas installation view, Mexican Museum, San Francisco, CA 2016
Las Madres Perdidas installation view, Mexican Museum, San Francisco, CA 2016
Las Madres Perdidas installation view, Mexican Museum, San Francisco, CA 2016
Las Madres Perdidas installation view, Mexican Museum, San Francisco, CA 2016
Las Madres Perdidas installation view, Mexican Museum, San Francisco, CA 2016

Las Madres Perdidas/The Lost Mothers 2000/2016

“Las Madres Perdidas” is a sculpture that depicts a standing figure suffused with light. The piece comprises of a black metal enclosure opened at the wall side. Inside the enclosure is a point light source and an adjustable shelf. On this shelf is a styrene plastic figure of a female body. It is the“skin” from an anatomical model with all of the internal organs and skeleton removed. As the light passes through the styrene plastic it differentiates the light paths, thus creating a sparkling diffused image of a person standing, roughly life size in a light “opening” in the wall. The work seeks to create a presence of body without its attendant mass. It appears mystical in the Christian sense of a body suffused with light, a heavenly spirit. The title refers to the artist’s mother, whose last days were spent in a state of dementia. Can one account for where the spirit of lost mothers rematerializes? Or is the loss of contemporary memory cushioned by the disappearance of the particular, expanded to episodes of brightness shining clearly from the distant past?