2003_Installation show 50th Venice Bienalle_05

2003_Installation show 50th Venice Bienalle_06

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AGUA TEJIDA EN LA 50 BIENAL DE VENECIA

Colombian representation to the 50th International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale. ILLA Pavillion, curated by Irma Aristizábal. Venice, Italy.

AGUA TEJIDA BLANCA / WOVEN WATER WHITE Starfish, metal.

Composed of thousands of starfish, these constructions look like fragments of "woven water". Sometimes they resemble the undulating surface of the ocean, or like sculptural, three-dimensional "chunks" of water. I joined the tips of each starfish to he next one with fine wire, and made their form and configuration the result of an organic process of addition.

Floating in space, these starfish constructions surround the viewer to recreate an underwater experience. The smell of the ocean emanates from them, filling the room. The natural color of this animal, beautiful shades of blue and grey, remind us of the color of the water, from whence they come. The symmetrical star shape-- its symbolism and formal beauty often evoke memories of literary worlds of fantasy and mystery.

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Using dissected animals and artificial flowers, Maria Fernanda Cardoso takes the organic form towards geometric abstraction, constructing primary structures filled with a semantically charged material. Her poetic installation of white starfish interwoven with metal wires awakens in us sensations relating to the sea, to blue, and to the profound fascination lost in the depths inhabited by brightly coloured animals and plants. The “interwoven” stars seem to fluctuate in space, as if they were fragments of “water”, creating an undersea atmosphere where the observer is surrounded by organic structures. Placed in this way, they can make us perceive the sensation of 'physical exaltation, similar to a lucid intoxication' which produces "the clarity, transparency and coolness of water in the early hours of he morning”. Maria Fernanda Cardoso's installation is like a homage to "her” Caribbean Sea, to the Adriatic which at this moment envelops us, and to the Pacific, which laps both her country and Australia, continent where she currently lives.

“Maria Fernanda Cardoso.” In Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer. 50th International Art Exhibition, 610–12. Venezia: Biennale di Venezia, 2003.

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QUOTES

“ They are from my marine era, from '94. I lived in San Francisco, which is a coastal city, and they sold many souvenirs of the sea: seashells, starfish, seahorses. He bought them in quantities and did works to recreate the marine environment. The difference with frogs and lizards is that people do not see these animals as such.
The relationship "has legs and walks" is not so immediate. I was interested in seeing their structures and knowing what happened when assembling many of them. Stars, for example, are united by their five legs, and become a perfect sphere. I started doing more formal studies through these animals”.

Villamarin, Paola. “El Zoológico de Maria Fernanda Cardoso.” El Tiempo. January 20, 2002.

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"I believe a lot in beauty, I think a lot of beauty comes from order. There are systems that make that works Nature is like that. I am very interested in the theory of chaos and complexity, where units simple form complex systems, and if one follows those systems, somehow this connects us with the universe, and has an emotional and aesthetic resonance. But it is also about control, even in non-formalist works such as the Flea Circus. I think the impulse is the same, to understand and control nature, a search for perfection. "

María Fernanda Cardoso, interviewed by
Elizabeth Ann Macgregor (2005).

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The most baroque of its installations, "Woven water, underwater landscape" (1994-2003) builds an ambience total; it's a staging-both of the idealization and of the nature commercialization. As a controlled space, it evokes also the dioramas of the museums of natural history and subjective character, almost arbitrary, of its mechanisms pedagogical, which serve as an artifice to transmit scientific knowledge.

Carolina Ponce de León,
"Inventario de curiosidades "(2004).

Spanish