Waste and omission

“Waste and omission” is the title of Gina Arizpe ’s solo exhibition presented at Galería Freijo as part of Apertura Madrid 2023 .

This project operates as a kind of journey of journeys in which the journey becomes the weft and warp of a fabric that, as it grows before our eyes, hides the reality of which it is a part. As Víctor Gallego always reminds us: “To do and undo everything is to do” and it is in this doing that waste and omission take shape.

The second law of thermodynamics states that all processes that occur in the universe are carried out in such a way that disorder, and therefore entropy, always increases globally and locally, in a small space and/or in a small time interval.

From a cotton bulb to a thread, from a thread to a fabric, from cold, seemingly random coordinates to a proper name, from a proper name to a fabric. Thus, a few steps lead us to a path that we would sometimes prefer not to take, but Gina Arizpe takes us by the hand to lead us down that path that we would prefer not to know.

This exhibition is structured around three pieces and the tension generated between them: "A Question of Time", "Names and Coordinates" and "Catalina Suárez (The Intimate)":

-"Cuestión de tiempo" is a long-running piece, a performance production that was first presented at the SAPS in Mexico City in 2018, although its production began in 2014. In 2020, it received the Fundación 1800 Award for the best ZonaMaco production and has recently been performed in Copenhagen. Throughout its presentations, it has been loaded with density, like another layer that can be seen in its formalization: starting from a shapeless mountain of cotton, some women spin it with the help of a spinning wheel until it becomes a fine thread with which they weave an impossible fabric on a frame; as their work progresses, they become hidden by their own doing until they disappear before our eyes.

- In "Names and Coordinates" it is the artist's own work that conceals, on the one hand, the complex research work that is the basis of the proposal: the full names of the women whose bodies have appeared in a place determined by their coordinates at a specific time; and on the other, the very reality that their murders represent by "weaving" with this data a series of drawings on paper in which their accumulation hides its evidence.

-"Catalina Suárez (Lo íntimo)" Part of the first femicide in the history of Mexico of which there is a record. The victim and the perpetrator were Spanish (Catalina Suárez was the wife and victim of Hernán Cortés) and this information serves the author to make a reflection on the binomial femicide-intimacy based on data and situations that occurred in Spain in recent years formalized in a series of medium-format paintings and other smaller pieces that recall a certain lost intimacy.

All these works will be on display until October 28, 2023 at Galería Freijo.

Commissioner: Ramon Mateos