2023-10-09 15:18:18
SEW THE RIVER
Esther Regueira Maurizproject commissioner
sew the river is a visual and affective story generated with the work of Victoria Gil (Badajoz, 1964), one of the first Spanish artists whose practice has been positioned in feminist currents since its beginnings in the late 1980s.
Works created specifically for this exhibition are shown alongside previous works that contextualize their work and help generate a space that eludes forms of control and invites us to let thoughts and desires flow.
In this exhibition, paintings, drawings, documentation of performances or textile practices coexist, in which the artist proposes a clear de-hierarchization of the genres, formats and techniques established throughout history. These are proposals that deal with abuses of power, the political construction of bodies, the taboos imposed by religion, the reification of women in patriarchal society, the consequences of decolonial processes and the effects of capitalism on our societies. identities, desires, bodies and subjectivities, themes to which we can add love and the relationships that derive from the always subjective interpretations of this feeling. They are works in which we can appreciate fundamental tools of Gil’s practice: transgression and a particular sense of humor.
Victoria Gil’s work questions the banality of the binary categorization established by the official hetero-patriarchal history that divides women into good and bad, because this artist is a Houdina who escapes the bonds imposed on women socially and liberates many. others. To witches and sorceresses like Circe (Circe makes a concoction) for those who claim the emancipatory condition of their knowledge; to women like Teresa of Ávila and María Alcaforado (in the series What do you want of me?), capable of exercising their freedoms despite being part of one of the most conservative institutions in the history of humanity; or the pirates like Mary Read and Anne Bonny whom he immortalizes in a painting that recognizes the strength of friendship and that suggests a challenge to imposed identities as it suggests a queer dimension.
The artist not only pays tribute to well-known women who have gone down in history with their own names, but also to those anonymous citizens whose lives and work are as fundamental as those of others: farm workers (We were so calm), caregivers (The good neighbor) or colonized (The locals work). In these pieces she recovers the domestic memory of women that official accounts have ignored. To do this, she uses textile arts as an artistic language, understanding that sewing, embroidery and weaving are not a women’s pastime relegated to the domestic sphere, but rather a feminist political action with the potential to activate social debates.
Victoria Gil claims to work from intuition, but hers is, without a doubt, an “intuition” formed and informed, fed by readings, films, exhibitions, conversations and experiences, as well as by reflections, which she shares with us, so that together we can sew many more rivers.
All information in:
Victoria Gil sew the river, C3A Center for Contemporary Creation of Andalusia, Córdoba. From October 10, 2023 to March 3, 2024.
Curator: Esther Regueira Mauriz.
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