Carmen Mardónez
Spring 2022 Artist in Residence
“As a woman, my entrails have always been governed by others. Before I even menstruated for the first time, I was taught to sew, knit, and embroider, only to become a caring wife and exemplary mother: no one asked me if that was my plan. After unexpectedly becoming a mother, the rebellion against the conservative religious education I received furiously exploded. I refused to become what I was trained for. My artistic work became the expression of my resistance.“
-Carmen Maradónez, Spring 2022 AiR
Artist Statement
“In my current practice, I combine freestyle embroidery and three-dimensional fabric sculptures, made using textile waste, and create textiles installations. Using bed sheets and pillows, I seek to connect with these radically intimate spaces that have witnessed the embodied repression, byproduct of centuries of indoctrination, that we as women have experienced through history. But even more importantly, they are the space of our wildest dreams, utopias of liberation and sisterhood.”
Carmen Mardónez
Pinky Promise
May 6 - May 27, 2022
Informed by deep, moving personal observations about her life in another country, her status as a wife and mother and cultural differences, Mardónez explores themes of isolation, loss, love and sisterhood in her colorful, textured, embroidered textiles. As we create space for women artists to connect to their creative intentions, it seem appropriate to share Mardónez’s intentions in her own words:
“When I first moved across the continent, I promised myself I would become an artist. The still ongoing process of becoming one has been crossed by the experience of being a stranger in a country whose language I struggle with, the experience of becoming a mother far from my village, and the experience of recognizing myself as inhabiting a deteriorating body in a country that values your life according to your pocket.
Isolation, loss, exhaustion, loneliness; love, hope, friendship and sisterhood. The impossibility of expressing in words the overwhelming feelings of living through these times has become the fuel of my creations. My practice of pure intuition and compulsion seeks the fluency that my words and routine lack.
This exhibition is a statement: anyone can become an artist, at any age and no matter their background. All that it takes it’s a room on your own. Traditional women’s work, such as hand embroidery, can and should be valued as art. Hand embroidery can become massive and monumental. Pink is a powerful color to work with. The color that reminds us of the mocking for being too girly or not girly enough. The color that the sky takes in a burning planet.
Art is a promise: there will be sisterhood, there will be a future on this planet. We will win.”
