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EXHIBITION:
Skinless 2021-01-29 - 2021-25-05 Curator: Susana Blas
The exhibition Skinless, specifically devised by Marina Núñez for Kubo Kutxa, presents a set of recent works that convey malleable, empathic identities with environments, in which physical and psychological boundaries are diluted or duplicated in the scenarios or landscapes of which they are part.
Skinless is about identity, the idea of boundary and the more often than not uncomfortable dialogue between the connected, endless, open, soft and metamorphic and the constrained, stereotyped and controlled. Evocations of an environment in transformation and “on the road to destruction”, which today has shifted from being a theoretical matter to an urgent problem, given the evidence of imminent catastrophe brought about by the environmental crisis.
In line with recent ideas of theorist Donna Haraway –who exerted a great influence on the post-humanist artistic discourse of the late 20th century with her A Cyborg Manifesto (1984)– the exhibition invites us, as Haraway suggests in her latest book, Staying with the Trouble (2019), to reshape our relationship with the Earth and its –human and non-human– inhabitants, accepting that we have to inhabit a wounded territory together. Ideas that resonate with Núñez’s work, in which scenarios, though hostile and distorted, are open to integration and symbiosis. The show’s title alludes to eliminating the boundary that isolates us from the outside world: the skin, as a reason for merging with both the natural environment and technology, and understanding life on Earth as an organic process in which our decisions, although crucial, belong to broader laws that affect the entire cosmos.
Light as the unifying energy of parts has been present in Marina Núñez’s output since her earliest works, not only as an iconography leading to transformation, but also by being the instrument and matter of her pieces, given that the artist in recent years, although still considering herself as a painter, has opted for digital techniques: video, photography and infographic drawing, which enable extreme malleability that is line with her theoretical concerns.
This scenario of energy, climate and social crisis prevailing in recent decades has been joined by a global pandemic in 2020. The spread of a fluid, mutable and constantly expanding virus helps us to understand, almost in a literal manner, the concept of boundary that the artist attributes to the epidermis.
The invisible disease penetrates through the skin while we try without much success to control its access. This wicked, replicating virus is additionally nothing more than the consequence of human actions of wildly exploiting ecosystems that are now taking their toll on “civilisation”. The dichotomies of nature/culture and body/technology have underpinned the artist’s imaginary ever since her earliest works. Marina Núñez has for many years been interested in otherness (madness, monstrosity, the cyborg universe) and in non-canonical imaginaries, and although all her work is an attempt to reveal alternative realities to the norm, perhaps the difference of this exhibition from previous projects is the appropriateness of the show in the uncertain, apocalyptic times that humanity has been experiencing over the past year.
THE ARTIST: Marina Núñez (Palencia, 1966)
In her works, Marina Núñez depicts different, aberrant, hideous beings, ones existing beyond the pale or contrary to the norm. The anomalous bodies that inhabit her paintings, digital images or videos speak to us about a metamorphous, hybrid, multiple identity. She recreates a destabilising, impure subjectivity for which otherness is not something alien, but a basic component of the human being.
With a Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Marina Núñez is currently a professor of painting in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Vigo while remaining fully dedicated to her artistic career.
Her work has been displayed in both solo and group shows in Spain and various cities throughout the world (Paris, Buenos Aires, Venice, Berlin, London, New York, Krakow, Palermo, Ajaccio and Shanghai). Ever since her initial works, she has been an artist who questions gender roles and established, Marina Núñez. Photo: Pedro Gallego canos, as well as that which exists beyond conventions. She has expressed this quest in various formats, such as painting, video and 3D animation, and in recent years she has shown a preference for 3D software and special effects. Her work displays the possible influence that science fiction literature or cinema has had on her, two key sources of inspiration.
As for her subject matter, one can identify madness, death, monstrosity and science fiction, although the main focus of her work is the female figure. Marina Núñez has created a world of her own populated by creatures and settings that exist on the margins or against the norm.
Her work can be found in the collections of several institutions, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Artium in Vitoria-Gasteiz, MUSAC in León, Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, La Panera in Lleida, TEA in Tenerife, CAAM in Las Palmas, Es Baluard in Palma de Mallorca, Fundación la Caixa, Fundación Botín, MAC in La Coruña, CAB in Burgos, FRAC Corsica or the American University, Washington DC.
She currently resides in both Madrid and Pontevedra and is a professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Vigo.
ACTIVITIES
Tornados, supernovas and tides A conversation between Marina Núñez and Susana Blas
15 April at 18:00 (online) Conversation between the artist and the curator. Available on our Youtube channel
Gided visits
Every Saturday 5.30pm in Basque / 6.30pm in Spanish
Whit prior booking, T 943 251939, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , in the gallery.
GUIDE OF EXHIBITION:
Discard here the guide of exhibition.
@kubokutxa
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