Territorios en Fuga| Alida Martínez

When we review the elements that make up Alida Martínez’s recent work we can track objects and references that put us in tune with the general framework of her activity. This work continues strengthening on her personal reflections as to cultural identity, identity of gender and opening to a dialogue. It is logical, then, for her to use maps of the Caribbean coasts to reiterate her discourse, to establish contextual references within the images she produces, while keeping on digging in her own intimacy. What distinguishes a statement like «today you drove me to the black point of my life, damn it» from the therapeutic function and places it in the space of art? The answer is a thorny, pendulous one; it is a matter of degree.

The text emerges as a cathartic exercise, but placed in contact with elements that mitigate that need for expression-healing and transform it into a hinge connecting general and particular, but without becoming detached from that peculiarity. A feminine voice that raises a complaint in the midst of a patriarchal system that tends to silence feminine voices. A fragment of personal history associated to fragmented images to revert dispersion and fragility, transforming it into empowerment. No spectator will know exactly what story was behind the phrase, but he/she will understand that it is the reflection of a common problem, which is protest and resistance, not just therapy.

When tearing up these maps and acting on them, Alida Martínez annuls their «usefulness», their value to show real domination routes, dissolving their effectiveness as graphic and ideologicalinterpretation of a territory. In each work she uses as starting point, maps seem to undertake the double action of mentioning the geographical territory in which she inscribes and subverting the ideological relations implicitly contained in the map, clarifying new contents distant from the great stories of power.

Text fragment wrote by Susana Quintero Borowiak.

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