“SEEKING SUSTENANCE” – A work selected for the 2nd Latin American Autumn Salon, Marta Traba Gallery – Memorial of Latin America, São Paulo, Brazil, 2014 – encapsulates in an installation the idea of a universe lacking foundation, support, of “finding one’s footing,” which never arrives and impoverishes the spirit of humanity. A universe without certainties and with unreliable points of reference, with ephemeral and materialistic values that distance human beings from introspection and from the enjoyment of a life enriched by feelings rather than by objects that determine who we are.

The artist states: “I wish to create an environment in which I can offer a personal experience through a participatory staging. Since in its realization, as many people took part as there are hands in the Work, seeking to rescue, within this plurality, the human being.
It is a contact with one’s own self as a transcendental experience, the existential meaning of that self within its surroundings. The ending remains open, leaving the viewer to bring the Work to a personal and reflective close.”

“SEEKING SUSTENANCE” is a piece of conceptual art that seeks to provoke a reading capable of revealing the path the artist constructed and where she engraved her message.
A meaning that slips between the wooden pieces that imprison and suffocate, between the rust that corrodes and slowly consumes everything, between the hands that search for an exit—hands with identity, hands that assert their presence as unique and unrepeatable beings amid the chaos of universal homogenization; hands seeking air, help, something to grasp in order to move forward, where the presence of a heartbeat is evidenced in their pale pigmentation, keeping them alive, struggling against that sea of dense, solid materials that silence them and confine them in an enclosure that will not let them escape.
Even so, they fight on, and life continues—just as the artist’s work continues, as she too pursues the grounding that justifies her Work and “gives sustenance” to her own existence.

Yesterday, landscape and two-dimensional figuration may have been the chosen and necessary expressive medium. Today, she turns to the absolute contemporaneity of Installation to connect with the viewer, establishing a new code that involves, challenges, and engages them physically and emotionally with the Work— and with her.

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Text: Lic. María Carolina Baulo

2015