Ana de Matos
Bodies of Faith
25 April-10 June 2006
From 11 am to 2 pm and from 5 to 8 pm, Tuesday to Saturday
Free entrance
A DVD catalogue on Ana de Matos will be edited by MetrònomLab
Metrònom – Fundació Rafael Tous dArt Contemporani
Fusina, 9, E-08003 Barcelona
Phone: 34 932684298
Fax: 34 932684214
info [at] metronom-bcn.org
Galician artist Ana De Matos presents Bodies of Faith, a series of installations and a video program, at Metrònom. The central theme of this work is the way in which women experience the world through an alienated body. Some cultures impose physical barriers that make it difficult to live in the real world, through a burka, veil or lattice. Others weave more sophisticated webs of power, be it through the use of the sacred Word in religions or through stories in the gossip magazines that create models of archetypal feminine life, real myths that become truths or standards that women must then measure themselves against, over and over, in their daily lives. Then woman, whether goddess, saint or princess, is trapped inside a labyrinth of representations that annuls her existence and turns her into something that is no more than an empty surface, a gaze through cloth, a body of faith. For the first time in her trajectory, the artist includes works on video in an exhibition that is part of the International Video Art Fair LOOP06 and the 12th Barcelona womens art festival, FEMART 2006 organized by Ca la Dona.
The exhibition is made up of a series of audiovisual installations – conceived specially for Metrònom – that try to reverse ways of seeing: to provoke visitors into reflecting on their preconceived ideas about identity, and either convert them to the position offered by a particular piece or simply allow them to come to terms with what it means to believe or expect something. From Barbie dolls as a canon of beauty to the sanctification of Diana of Wales, through catholic mysticism or the situation of Hindu women, Ana De Matos observes the weak contradiction that is embodied in the body of faith, and then confronts the spectator with this ambiguity. To transmit that same uneasiness towards the way we assume the things we have always been told or showed; those things, such as the body, that are taken for granted although they are not there.
The work of Ana De Matos has always been characterized by its sumptuous sensuality, a surface appearance that becomes the starting point for intimate reflections on the condition of the feminine subject throughout history. Her feminism is a process of introspection that unfolds the weight of tradition and imposed tales in all their cruelty to reveal its power over ways of living and desire. After several periods of travel to faraway cultures, her concerns have extended to the sceneries where the metaphors and the formal resources she had been working with melted into the real: this is why video has become an important element of her latest work, to provide the perplexed subjective record of a reality that goes beyond the foreseeable.
Ana De Matos received a PhD in Fine Arts from the Universidad Computense in Madrid. Her engraving works have been internationally acknowledged, and some of her pieces belong to public collections in Spain, the USA and Japan. Individual exhibition highlights include Territorios de locura y de poder (Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, Mallorca, 2005), Sin lugar (Museo Provincial de Lugo, 2003), Love for ever (Procesalia, Santiago de Compostela, 2002), Sujetos (Palacio de Minas, Madrid, 2003), Vestido Animal (Galeria dos Coimbras, Braga, 2001), Nowhere Man (La caja negra, Madrid, 2002) and Vestidos y cabezas (Kings Fine Arts, New York, 1999).
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As a pioneering space in Barcelonas art scene since 1980, Metrònom -the Rafael Tous Contemporary Art Foundation- is an important cultural point of reference in the city. One of the basic goals and defining characteristics of the space is its commitment to providing a production and support platform for emerging artists. During its twenty-four year history, Metrònoms unconventional and internationally acclaimed curatorial program has included the visual arts, installations, video, photography, video, photography, experimental music, contemporary dance, theatre, cinema and performance.
