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To the Ear/Polychromed terra-cotta
  

  Solo Show
Lisbet Fernandez

Issue #48 Apr - Jun 2003

Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros


Lisbet Fernández (Camagüey, Cuba, 1974) presented her show “La casa de las luces” at the recently opened Myto gallery. The show comprised mainly seven sculptural groups, and it acquired a singular relevance in the context of contemporary Mexican visual arts because of its approach to the subject of mestizaje and its Latin American perspective —at a moment when the voices of several authors coincide in this country in shows whose gaze is directed this time towards the southern part of the Hemisphere.
In “La casa de las luces”, Fernández engages in a direct approximation to childhood, not only through what is represented (all the works are images of children in various attitudes), but also by emphasizing the fragility of childhood itself. This is highlighted by the equally fragile nature of the material, a fine terra-cotta on which the artist has painted new colors for the skin, hair, clothes, and which she has even punctured, as in Lluvia, where we see a child suspended high up on a wall, from whose chest and hands water is expected to flow.
Fernández conceptual closeness to authors such as Kiki Smith, Jake and Dinos Chapman, and even Abigail Lane, inscribes her inside those contemporary artistic trends that privilege the use of the body and its three-dimensional reproduction.
Although every work on display travels this path, specially remarkable along those lines is El aliado. Here, a child faces a figure that represents a bear. On a first level, taking into account the piece’s title, we read in this bear a representation of the Soviet Union, which for so many years had a real presence in Cuba’s political and social life. On a second level, we are reminded of a teddy bear, a child’s toy that retains its evocative power even when brought to more monumental proportions. Finally, a third level is that of family history and formative experiences in the interaction between the child and his or her elders (teachers or relatives); on the bear’s eyes, Fernández has placed a portrait of her own grandfather, who from those alien ocular orbits watches over a child patiently sitting in front of an otherwise disquieting figure.
The bear’s altered proportions (the piece is over 1-meter tall) brings to mind Ron Mueck’s strange babies, with their huge corpulence and their overwhelmingly realist detail, in contrast with the realistic figure of the dead father that, in its reduced size, resembled the figure of a child.
Ama de llaves is another piece in which Lisbet Fernández advances her commentary on the subject of Latin American mestizaje. A young girl, seated in the Lotus position on top of rows of upwards-pointing keys (it reminds us of a fakir’s bed of nails), softly drops her hands on her sides. On her head there is a confused arrangement of hairs, somewhat resembling an oriental hairdo. Her eyebrows, arched and delicately delineated, speak of a premature adolescence and a childhood lost (something also suggested by the title) in the need to join the labor force.
Are these children whose lives have been upturned by a forced jump into adulthood? Is this an idealized view of childhood? Of these children’s identities and their representation of “innocence”? The eyes of the girl standing next to her companion suggests just that; the male child wearing a blue shirt in Al oído tells us, however, with his very pose and attitude, that play is still possible and that curiosity can be stated by simply standing on our toes and spying something that us, the viewers, cannot see.
The presence at “La casa de las luces” of A partes iguales is perhaps one of the most revealing ways in which Lisbet Fernández has chosen to approach the issue of the relationship between Latin America and Europe. Taken directly from Velásquez’ famous painting, one of the meninas has become corporeal.
On her right side we see her magnificent dress, so often quoted in the history of contemporary painting by artists such as Saura Gironella, Cuevas, and many others; on her left side we see the same child but without the dress, which has been cut through its middle to reveal its many crinolines, bases, and supports. The contrast between the dressed and the naked halves of the body is violent.
The child, originally blond (and this is how she appears in the catalog’s cover), was given a new hair color for the opening of the show. The public found her as a brunette, and there were also a pair of scissors stuck in the ground next to the figure’s left side, the side of her nudity. The piece is titled A partes iguales.
Although the show was completed by a number of paintings, these were, to be honest, rather unnecessary. Fernández’ sculptures have a reach that her painting doesn’t possess. Her far-reaching meditations in terra-cotta leave a profound imprint in a Latin American dialog filled with voices that more and more resemble each other. Fernandez’s treatment of the issues of mestizaje and of childhood, as well as the bridge she extends between the Caribbean and the continent, deserve considerable attention. In their localism resides their wealth, and in her critical commentary we find one of the most efficient and correct ways of pointing out subjacent differences among Latin Americans. A dissimilarity that, paradoxically, brings together a multitude of voices and new expressions.
 


 

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