GODDESSES & SUBDITS SERIES 2012


This time I wanted to make an interpretation of the power of beauty and femininity over others.
These goddesses, queens and princesses are at the top of their society.

They look over their shoulders and watch us from another dimension. They are powerful, magnetic, proud, coquette, dominant and they know how to cast their spell..

VENUE;
JustMad Mia art fair 2012
Soho Studios
at The Wynwood Convention Center
2136 NW 1st Avenue
Miami, FL 33127 USA
6 – 9 December 2012
Open to the public: Thursday 6 from 14 to 20h.
Friday 7, Saturday 8 from 12 to 20h.
Sunday 9 from 12 to 19h.
http://www.justmadmia.com/info-2/?lang=en

Mariana Monteagudo is a Miami based Venezuelan artist who has been working her series of doll sculptures over the last decade. Her latex, ceramic and mixed-media dolls are intriguing and fascinating. Her artwork shows interest in a wide range of expressions , from the pre-Columbian aesthetics, to fashion , tv pop culture, Japanese manga and mass-market toys.
Muñecas (Dolls) is the generic term Monteagudo uses to describe her creations since 1998. With them, the artist has received important awards and exposure, and her pieces have been featured in solo and group shows and fairs in Madrid, Miami, Chicago, Aruba, Caracas, New York, Sao Paulo, and other venues. Her unusual characters have attracted the attention of many critics and her work is part of the MOLAA Museum in California, Everson Museum, NY, Cesar Gaviria Trujillo Collection, Colombia, among other contemporary art collectiions.

Selected solo and group Exhibitions:

2012 HUMANOID , Galería El Museo, Bogotá
2010 NARCISSUS MIRROR solo show, Galería el Museo,Bogota
2008 ARTEAMERICAS ART FAIR, Miami, USA
2008 CIRCA Art Fair 08, Puerto Rico, U.S.A.
2007 CIRCA Art Fair 07, Puerto Rico, U.S.A.
2007 ARTEAMERICAS ART FAIR, Miami, U.S.A.
2006 SELF PORTRAITS Galería el Museo, Bogotá.
2005 RECENT WORK AccessArt Gallery, Aruba.
2004 POP Dubhe Carreño Gallery, Chicago, U.S.A.
2004 SOLO SHOW, Galería Fernando Pradilla Madrid Spain
2002 SOLO SHOW, Galería el Museo, Bogotá, Colombia.
2002 ICONS IDOLS Sala Mendoza, Caracas.
2001 CREATURES Galería Fernando Pradilla Madrid, Spain.

Group Exhibitions
2012 SP arte / SAO PAULO ART FAIR, Sao Paulo, Brazil
2011 MEMORIA 10th anniversary exhibition, Galeria Fernando Pradilla, Madrid, Spain.
2010 Polimorfos Perversos, Galeria fernando Pardilla, Madrid, Spain.
210 Ellas Crean, Galeria Fernando Pradilla, Madrid, Spain
2009 ARTBO, art fair, Bogotá, Colombia
2008 SCOPE Art Fair Hamptons, New York, U.S.A.
2008 ART Rotterdam 08 Witzenhausen Gallery, Rotterdam Netherlands.
2005 ARCO art Fair, Gallery FernandoPradilla, Madrid, Spain
2004 TBA ART CHICAGO, Chicago Illinois, USA.
2004 ARCO ART FAIR 2004, Madrid Spain.
2003 8 TH HAVANNABIENALE 2003, la Habana, Cuba
2003 TBA ART CHICAGO, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
2003 FERIA ARCO, Madrid, Spain.

Selected collections:
MOLAA Museum of Latin American Art, California, USA
Everson Museum Syracuse, New York, U.S.A.
Robert Loder Collection, Chairman of the Triangle Arts Trust, London England.
Pedro Muñoz Marín Collection, Puerto Rico, U.S.A.
César Gaviria Trujillo Collection , Colombia.
Magaly Cannizzaro de Capriles Collection, Caracas Venezuela.
Banco Mercantil, Caracas, Venezuela.
Colección Luís Gutiérrez Puerto Rico, USA.

NEWS: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evelyne-politanoff/goddesses-and-subdits-the_b_2214820.html

email: marianamontelandia@gmail.com

Mariana Monteagudos´ solo Show
Narcissus´ Mirror
Being fragile and powerful, adopting zoomorphic variants, physical disabilities, and absolutely free styles and dressings, all these legions of beings seem to be loudly expressing a sentence. All of them summarize a mutability of character and destiny which is proportional to the mutability that defines contemporary society; at the same time that they seem to challenge mystery or place themselves ahead of an unknown or menacing circumstance, they lie unarmed and frightened….
…The freedom of choice in order to develop her own search leaded her to look through the unconscious, to be in search of her inner self, arriving at the end to a re-encounter with the toy figurine. Since that time, she has comfortably experimented and studied in depth the building of a personal language, that can be appreciated in the pieces that are exhibited.
The semantics, the meaning of each character´s dressing allows to decode a symbolism of archetypes that is confronted with standardized lines of faces and bodies, which are hieratic and vertical, resembling a column that supports big cheek faces, faces showing an exaggerated roundness and completely expressionless eyes without membranes. ¿Idols from an exiled olimpo? ¿Which is the essence of their ambiguities? ¿Could it be the symbolic representation of the dark emerging to the light?
Only the artist herself has given form to these beings; within their autonomy, they represent her production strategy. When she suggests some clues to decode them, she proposes us, too, to see beyond the realm of the inanimate world, and to glimpse an emotive expression in her need of showing herself, of recognizing herself in her creation. This narcissist impulse of being reflected, mirrored in her work, and of making clear its projections, is a “game” that clears up the conscious and the unconscious. This can be appreciated in the metaphor of the luminous and somber features of the characters. We could say that, in search of her own aspects at the artistic level, Mariana Monteagudo finds the certainties of a personal, precise and careful language, which is dense and structured. A Narcissus´ Mirror as work method.

Tahía Rivero

publications
various sources