The use of materials to make art by three artists from different locations and traditions.
The Untitled (little shoe) was made from nylon and paraffin. Made to be worn, weaving nylon threads and using paraffin to make it wearable and give it the texture and shape of a common shoe.
Merz sculptural production often incorporates waving and knitting -activities conventionally tied to women’s work, craft and domestic labour. Marisa Merz was the ´sole female protagonist´of Arte Povera, a term coined by Germano Celant in 1967 to describe a group of Italian artists who rejected elitist resources for ´poor´materials such as rocks, wood, burlap and industrial remnants.
Her ´scarpettes´(little shoes) is a stoning aesthetic form that conjure the body and bodily. Her seem to invoke the somatic conditions of being in a body. The sculpture and other works are also an exercise that’s peaks to this personal and material orientation of temporarily . A pair of ballerina-like slippers that resemble the structure of a sea sponge, but are made of synthetic threads of nylon that
Marisa Merz. Untitled (Little shoe) 1968
are woven into a delicate shoes a fairy-tail-like spirit, referencing Cinderella´s glass slipper, a ´rethoric of feminity´.
Arte Povera´s conceptual principles, the gap between life and art was closed through the utilization of everyday material and in Merz´s case intensified by her marginalized position within the movement itself.
The materiality of her work in which she often employed traditional craft, the utilisation of ´poor´material and the favouring of simplistic resources and processes remain highly evocative and clever way to deal with the climate change and environment emergency if this era. In certain way that evokes my personal interest in going back to our grounds recalling a low-technology derived from traditional Ecological Knowledge, as a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices and sustainable in nature exploring indigenous innovations and tcaditionsfron the past millennia in architecture and interior design.
Untitled 1987 Doris Salcedo [Drawing]
Doris Salcedo, Untitled 1987
This is one of several Untitled works that Salcedo created between 1985 and 1989.
This work was made from a steel shelving unit and the two ends of a hospital cot which were cut and welded to make a third object.
The steel shelving unit was inverted, one of its legs cut off and the other three vented inwards. Some parts of the shelving were roughly and unevenly removed created a different composition with a different geometry but beautifully balanced and proportioned. That leaved raw edges and corners inside the frame. The ends of the hospital bed, painted in chipped white enamel, were bent to make them fit to the steel shelving unit. The taller one was bent at one side and the shorter was bent at both sides making fit its legs to the level of the second shelf. Ten plastic dolls melted in very hot casting wax were attached to the joints, representing the shadows of human lives lost due the drug trade in Colombia.
Salcedo is permanently showing us all the wounds; cracks; ruptures; painful; abuses which speak about a broken society. A society victim to the ongoing conflict in her native Colombia between far-left guerrilla groups, the military, drug traffickers, and paramilitary forces.
During 1980´s Salcedo began making sculpture in New York, while attending New York University (MA 1984) and was here where was inspired by Joseph Beuys and his interest in infusing sculpture with sociopolitical meaning.
The main connection with Salcedo is our origin, we are both Colombians, Colombian women who have experienced in one way or another the violence caused by a never-ending war and political corruption. Both of us witness of that conflict but at the same time individuals who have lived in the capital where the conflict is seen from the distance lacking the experiences faced by the ones that are living this reality and have fallen victims to the ongoing conflict.
In my opinion, one of the aspects of Salcedo´s practice that I can learn from and can inform my practice is the integration social and political awareness with making focusing on materials that convey specific meanings, that reflect our feelings. What is more, begin to think in architecture and interior design as a meeting point of ideology, theory, materials and objects and make elements this areas that combined the aesthetics of my design language and brand with social critique.
From surface to surface is made from Cedar wood sawed into different shapes, exposing their surface qualities through different kinds of repetitive cuts.
In my opinion, the choice of Cedar wood in this piece of art, is making as a calling to understand the world as is by combining organic and natural materials and industrial processes but giving, at the same time, a message against the embrace of technology and visual trickery.
For me the connection to my work is the usage of natural and simple materials and the interest of going back to handcraft making. I urge a revaluation of the Industrial Revolution even though the birth of the brith of design, in the modern sense, can be traced back to it. A new age has begun, an age in which it is necessary to reconnect the user with the maker.
Being a woman working in a third world country, provide a privileged use of natural materials and handcrafted making. That is one of our biggest treasures. Colombia is an artisan country par excellence, this land is home to of masters who have mastered
ceramics, weaving wood, carving wood and other arts that have been passed down for generations. This is the main reason why I involve artisans handcrafted making in y work and one of my missions as an architect and a designer is to provide Colombian artisans whose I work with, with opportunities to expand beyond their local markets while striving for the sustained development of the environment and the progress of artisan communities. loved the idea of understand the world as it is by exploring the essential properties of materials, such as wood, often combining organic and industrial processes.
Koshimizu became a prominent artist on the Moho-ha movement from the 1960´s, creating minimal sculptures and installation pieces from basic materials such as iron, wood and paper. Mono-ha was the name given to a loosely associated group of artists whose work was stridently anti-modernist. From early on, Koshimizu´s investigation of material and space resulted in some of Moho-ha´s most definitive artworks.