MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL’S PALIMPSESTS AT MILAN

Working with the MUDEC and Fondazione Ratti collections, Mariana Castillo Deball selected twelve textile fragments from different geographical areas and periods on which she made her own watercolours. These images were then printed in large format on fabric and assembled with additional textile elements in the workshops of the NABA—New Academy of Fine Arts—with a group of students under the direction of Salvatore Averzano. Three-dimensional “palimpsests” were created, shimmering with different meanings and stories.

For the first time, the intervention on the glass surface changes the status of the architecture itself, transforming it into a reflective volume on which the sculptures made of light, semi-transparent textiles appear. Natural light filters through this composition of textile fragments, creating a new cartography.

Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball (b. 1975)—who represented Mexico at the Venice Biennale in 2022 and participated in dOCUMENTA (13), 2012 in Kassel—has conceived a textile project for the Agora based on detailed preliminary research. Castillo Deball (b. 1975) takes a kaleidoscopic approach to her practice, mediating between science, archaeology and the visual arts, exploring the ways in which these disciplines describe the world.

Her installations, performances, sculptures and editorial projects arise from the recombination of different languages that seek to understand the role that objects play in our identity and history. Her work is the result of a long research process that allows her to explore the different ways in which a historical object can be read, presenting a version of reality that informs and merges into a polyphonic panorama. Interacting with the fabrics of the collections, Castillo Deball’s work creates a play of references between content and container, between the museum’s collections and David Chipperfield’s architecture.