María Lamas

María Carolina Baulo

Maria Lamas defines her artistic production from a social view that crosses everything. Just as it cannot be thought outside of a vital framework where we all participate in integrating experiences that affect and surround us without exception - even when the ways of dealing with them are not the same -, her work is emerging as an extension of that concern with which the plastic artist empowers it, talking to the concerned viewer, about ruptures, breaks and falls, in her own words. This is how her work unfolds between paintings, drawings, sculptures, models and installations, always putting an attentive eye on the dialogue that is established between the conceptual base committed to create links with the observer and the materialization of that ideological root, counting on figuration - in most cases - as her main ally.

Some series play a more silent role, they are approaches of the artist to a self-referential point of view where the human figuration, the face, the close-ups appear, almost like a mixed media print, of her inner circle, for example in the series of the Retratos (Portraits). Other series such as Palabras Quebradas (Broken Words) address issues that continue to refer to that personal universe where strength lies in what is not said, or in what is said with images, as well as the Luz (Light) series which focuses its attention on the artist's environment and in a twilight nature where the presence of water, the light of the night and the varied palette of climate changes are the echo of those internal glances and those painted words.

However, the power of Maria Lamas's work lies in her commitment to the social. Her works are in solidarity with a feeling related to the relegated minorities. Works such as those that make up the Mantas-Patchwork (Blankets-Patchwork) series are heirs to that concern to denounce the place of exclusion. What was originally intended to shelter, protect, contain and comfort, is displayed like a trophy on a wall impossible to shelter anyone, nullifying its functionality. Far from being the textiles that they emulate, the discarded materials -bags, cardboard, fabrics, among others- build stories of longings, fantasies and dreams of those who live on the streets. In the same vein are located the models of the Sueños Vacios (Empty Dreams) series, only this time the artist winks at Pop Art. Once again the absurdity and the contradiction are present in the impossibility of the objects to perform the function for which they were designed: beds where no one rests, matrices that flap on the walls like a bad joke, exposing structures without content. Another series following this path is Des-Hechos (Discards) where Maria takes the idea of ​​a “united family” but not as an ideal or stereotype but as a social group organized for the common good. The works, small objects-installations, house spaces for family reunions in the bowels of garbage cans. And it is almost obvious to say that the Cajas de Consumo (Consumer Boxes) series reveal to the observer an empty idealization of content where consumption is the filling necessary to cover the frustrating gap of permanent dissatisfaction. A whole poetic dedicated to show the side B of a unique space that contains us and that human beings, with their often mean and miserable ways, take care of converting it into a platform of class struggle to impose and survive at the expense of the other without any record of their related nature. The Dípticos (Diptychs) also approach this.

The Anverso-Reverso (Front-Back) series deserves a separate mention even when it transits that visceral interest in questioning the inequalities that society naturalizes, in this case doing so by establishing the monochromatic contrast to lead the story. It is no longer the forceful figuration, the textiles, the colorful installations or disposable materials reconverted into aesthetic tools that establish the visual impact, but here the black and white, the silhouettes cut out with no greater need than to define the contours that determine the features. Characteristics of the characters and their environments - enabling them to be recognized in their differences - are all that is necessary to synthesize the concept in a strong way. Thus the Arroz (Rice) diptychs propose a reading of this conceptual constant that leads the viewer to look towards the East where rice acts as a phenomenal example that illustrates the famous saying that "beans are cooked everywhere": black rice, in the oriental lands, it was cultivated and reserved for exclusive consumption of the imperial court for its nutritional properties, highly superior to white rice. Once again, the artist raises distances in terms of not registering the need of the other, the value of the other, the other as a mirror of oneself.  

More incipient is Maria Lama´s approach to the sculptures with a clear modern line, gravitating between the figurative and the abstract and putting the accent on immediate affections, family, hugs, kisses, the longed for touch. They are small three-dimensional structures in clay that begin to travel a path that seems to go back to that look from the beginning where everything starts in oneself, to observe the environment, to observe ourselves. Perhaps because they are works done within moments of great introspection when the Covid-19 pandemic modified all the plans of humanity and forced us to reflect. These small-format works were then born, economical in their resources, with the beauty of simplicity, stripped of noise and connected with a silence that the artist tries to travel incessantly.

The work of Maria Lamas grows in her search to express in as many ways as she feels necessary, that impulse to put on equitable levels those social aspects that class differences take to the extreme, creating the worst scenarios that we usually go through daily as human beings. But it also brings to the fore the instinct of a human being, an artist who thinks and reflects while imagining a better scenario. Because it is precisely the place of art that allows us to put light on dark not to be happier about it but to become aware and perhaps from there, as a first step, rise to a more just, supportive and happy plane.

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Lic. María Carolina Baulo, November 2020