Exhibitions
CULEBRAS @ Salon Acme 10 with Jeff Marfa Gallery
SOLO SHOW
Guest Projects section curated by Ana Castella
02.09.2023 – 02.12.2023
Opening: February 9th, 2023
Photos by Ramiro Chaves
PRESS PREVIEW
Press RELEASE
For Immediate Release: Aurora Pellizzi, CULEBRAS at Salon Acme No. 10 CMDX
Presented by JEFF MARFA Marfa, TX
Generated from a specifically female embodiment, Aurora Pellizzi’s works; felted, dyed, constructed or woven are both abstract and representational, merging traditional craft techniques with a metaphysical approach to art-making.
In her series The Ritual of the Serpent, created while immersed in the study of indigenous fertility rites, fundamental shapes posture as both sacred vistas and the female anatomy, thwarting our sense of the cosmic order. In these hand-felted works her serpentine geometries conflate femininity and the earth, embodiment and allegory, figure and ground.
Unable to engage in the demanding effort of fabricating weavings during a recent pregnancy, Pellizzi’s new series titled, Mojigangas are constructed in the vernacular tradition of the ready-made. In contrast to her previous works, while making the seven pieces presented here, she embraced the limitations of her physicality, forging a new approach to her practice.
Facial expressions grounded on jergas, a woven striped cloth used for mopping floor tiles, Pellizzi’s portraits conjure the carnival spirit of Mojigangas, a traditional Mexican village procession of characters dressed in drag. Court Jester, Hindu Goddess, Bride, Feathered-Serpent Dandy, Street-Style Girl, Diva, Sloth. With these Shakespearean caricatures, drawn with cheese graters, feather dusters, drain stoppers, soap dishes, sponges, clothes pins, buckets and mops, Pellizzi creates a cacophony of ruses that emote in colorful gesture the tenor of our dizzying current moment.
Hiding behind everyday objects reified in masked form, burlesque dignitaries hang from the ceilings and walls of the space – reconstructed as ceremonial totems, decorative sculpture, pictorial fields. Jergas, found in any household goods store in Mexico, when stretched, strung and embellished with brooms, brushes, sequins and trim, is offered up as respite, farce, disguise. With their familiar striped clothing, Aurora’s campy ready-made troupe of flappers, clowns, damsels and newlyweds transcend their everyday materials to emerge as modern archetypes, symbols of our universal cultural lineage.
CULEBRAS, a feminine noun, is a water snake in Mexico and a debt, disorder, game or soap opera in other Spanish-speaking regions. Evoking the occult ceremony of fertility rites and their venomous accomplices, as in her earlier series, Pellizzi’s names this installation after a harmless garden dweller, the serpent´s less feral cousin, in homage to the everyday creatures and objects found within the confines of our domestic spaces.