ANIMA MUNDI

La Galería Rebelde is pleased to present a sample of the work by artist Lourdes de la Riva (Guatemala, 1955), addressing important themes in her work, like the relationship of the human being with nature, traces and prints on materials and time; memory as a collective act of political action and impermanence and fragility. The exhibition shows three projects by the artist that talk about different moments of her production and that also require the participation of the public to be activated.

Thus, “Vincular” (2010) is a public project where the artist uses the sand ejected by the Pacaya Volcano, which in 2010 covered the entire city of Guatemala. With the collected sand, she created a series of furniture that was placed e in the Central Plaza as an invitation to rest, meet and dialogue, using a material whose meaning also carries a hard history of memory and evidences the relationship that the human being has with nature. The invitation to the public is repeated in the gallery, inviting viewers to meet in the "living room" created by the artist with the volcanic sand. When there are no spectators, the piece seems to remain empty and uninhabited, and could remind us of the lives lost during the latest volcano catastrophe.

Also referring to the relationship between nature and human beings, is the work "Y érase una vez…", presented for the first time in 2017 as a project that is activated only with the public. On that occasion, the artist built a kaleidoscope that could move on a carpet of news that reported on the controversial events that most affected humanity during 2017, and as part of them, the political reality of Guatemala. The project invites us to think about the misinformation in the media and invites us to think critically about who tells the historical narrative of the country. For ANIMA MUNDI, the piece is recreated with news that informs and misinforms about climate change, presenting both sides of the different political positions that exist on this global phenomenon. The kaleidoscope moves in the gallery with the help of the public, collectively seeking to build a new critical narrative about the news and the “truth”.

The third project was produced during the Covid-19 pandemic. The work "Resiliencia" (2020), is a 100 x 40 x 25 centimeter block of marble being affected by an excavator that demolished a construction on the site. The project sought to intervene in the marble with the brute force of machinery, proposing chance and experimentation as a result. The work speaks of a recurring scenario for the artist's work, such as demolition projects. In them, de la Riva finds her raw material and her inspiration to work on the memory of materials and space. From here it is then where her concerns about the passage of time, the trace and the print, become intuitively artistic and philosophical manifestations that make up a body of work based on the observation of her environment and curiosity for the materials.

To conclude the exhibition, artist Lourdes de la Riva performed her work “MADE FOR CHINA” for 12 hours straight at the gallery’s project room on the exhibition’s last week. The performance is a work in progress that began in 2008 when she produced the first of 1 million limited copies of her engraving “MADE FOR CHINA”. The work uses a moth-eaten log of wood with the inscription, she later uses rice paper to produce each print in long labor journeys in order to produce the million copies. The project reflects on the mass production lead from consumerism and critics labor rights and explotation. In a different approach from her other pieces in this shows, she continues to make the public a part of the work, inviting the spectators to accompany her in her persue of producing 100 prints in 12 hours at La Galería Rebelde. Other works of her series “Los Creadores” surround the prints installation, talking about another kind of labor, specifically the work that termites do on paper, wood and fabric which the artist photographs and paints creating abstractions or new meanings to old book images.

These five projects present different thematic aspects of the artist's work, proposing a review of her interests and inviting the public to participate in the creation of a work that needs to be affected by the body in order to exist.

Josseline Pinto, Curator. Guatemala, January 2023

Photography by: José Oquendo

Production by: La Galería Rebelde

RESILIENCIA (2020)

Digital video and documentary photograpy print on Hahnemühle paper

Photographic Record: Estuardo Vila

Video editing: Lica Productions

VINCULAR (2010)

Volcanic sand, covintec and cement

Installation originally presented in the Central Plaza of Guatemala City

Y ÉRASE UNA VEZ (2017-2023)

Adhesive vinyl, metal box, mirrors and wheels.

MADE FOR CHINA (2008-2023)

Ink on rice paper, 100 copies out of 1,000,000

DE LA SERIE: LOS CREADORES (2012-2023)

Iron, spray paint, digital print on paper, corian and acrylic on canvas.