GROUP EXHIBITION ON THE RESIGNIFICATION OF CRAFT IN ISABEL HURLEY
By Álvaro de Benito
With the aim of analysing the incorporation of craft techniques into contemporary art, the Isabel Hurley Gallery in Málaga presents Manos, materia y memoria (Hands, Matter and Memory), curated by Alicia Ventura, on view until mid-month. This group exhibition re-signifies the traditional role of craft and its historical association with the domestic and the feminine.
The show, which includes Natalia Castañeda (Manizales, Colombia, 1982), Ariamna Contino (Havana, Cuba, 1984) and Álex Hernández (Havana, Cuba, 1982) among a total of eight artists, also unfolds as a proposal of knowledge and reivindicative narration. For the artists in the exhibition, weaving, embroidering or modelling are expressions of memory and experience which, rather than being treated as nostalgic gestures, are reframed as contemporary actions.
Natalia Castañeda presents Sentires, a research-based project that approaches, through clay and ceramics, the relationship between body, land and landscape. Manual craftsmanship becomes a conversation in which these three agents dialogue and converge between the human and the natural.
Ariamna Contino and Alex Hernández continue their work with cut paper. This material functions both as embroidery and as cartography, integrating organic elements with social and statistical aspects that refer to real issues hidden beneath triumphant narratives. The artisanal nature of the process and its resulting forms appear as political actions against official discourses.
Alongside these Latin American artists, the exhibition includes El Lugar de las Fuerzas by Paula García-Masedo (Madrid, Spain, 1984), centered on the use of humble materials such as linen and various plants to produce handmade paper that challenges the established hierarchy between art and craft. Leonor Serrano Rivas (Málaga, Spain, 1986) explores, in Carcasa, a certain ritualism and resistance within the practice of modelling, linking art, architecture and performance as instrumental registers.
The work of Fuentesal Arenillas (Julia Fuentesal, Huelva, Spain, 1986, and Pablo Arenillas, Cádiz, Spain, 1989) proposes an expanded notion of craft grounded in experimentation and chance. Their sculptures and installations arise from processes infused with thought and action, presenting the artisanal as an organic and evolving practice.
Paloma de la Cruz (Málaga, Spain, 1991) engages with ceramics from an intimate standpoint, creating sewn pieces that stem from a practice where memory, space and affection meet. María Alcaide (Aracena, Spain, 1992) employs irony in La Romería de los Cornudos as a means to critique the tensions between labor and art, while in Cuerpo de Trabajo she revisits folkloric representations of it.
Manos, materia y memoria can be visited until 12 December at Isabel Hurley, Reding 39, Málaga (Spain).
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