María José de la Macorra

It is perhaps only after understanding the fascination of Maria José de la Macorra for the miraculous process of the reproduction and multiplication of the living organisms that one perceives the importance that she gives to the liquid element, and more precisely water…

The evidence of the (in)visible

by Esteban García Brosseau (noviembre, 2021)

The most immediate characteristic of the work of María José de la Macorra is perhaps the fact that it alludes to the various shapes of nature. To a certain degree, one might say that it is a sui generis register of the forms of the biosphere, reproduced through the work of the ceramist, although not restraining itself to this single discipline. Thus, there is something in it of the activity of the naturalist (some pieces, for instance, revisit, in a textile form, herbaria and botanical illustrations as those of Linneum or Maria Sybilla Merian). In this artistic activity there might be a sort of vindication aimed at emphasizing the value of untouched nature in opposition to the (masculine and patriarchal?) obsession of exploiting it, as Karen Cordero Reiman has argued. Indeed, whether from a “feminist” position or not, some of the pieces of María José de la Macorra are clearly aimed at denouncing the destruction of the environment. That is the case, for instance, of the series that testify of the disappearance of the orchids of the Ecological Reserve of the Pedregal, or that of the architectonical intervention on the shores of the Atoyac, where she built a lookout of tecali stone on a truncated pyramid made of volcanic stone with the intention of showing, not so much the beauty of the river, as it should have been, but the saddening reality of its destruction and its transformation into a fetid current, thus defying the gazer to tolerate the grief caused by the destructive activity of man, here as in so many other places.

However, to conceive the work of María José de la Macorra as a sort of social activism would not only be reductionist, but frankly erroneous. Her intention, indeed, seems to be closer to what we generally would understand by the idea of aesthetics, for it never surrenders the idea of beauty. What kind of beauty? That precisely which is produced by nature and is within our reach every day, but which we seem to be unable to see generally. Thus, María José de la Macorra becomes a sort of mediator who guides the gazer, almost taking him by the hand, to recognize the intrinsic perfection of the rain, the leaves, the branches, the seeds or the waves that are formed on the surface of water. She achieves this, not by imitating the natural shapes as would a landscape painter, but by decontextualizing them owing to the great expertise that her activity has given her. Thus, the water and the rain are reinterpreted by the artist by means of pearls which are themselves artificial, as they are really big ceramic beads; the gigantic proportions of an acorn prevent us to disparage it and oblige us to recognize the miracle of the birth of an oak; arborescent roots reveal us the prodigy of their fractal growth by contrasting with the white regularity of the walls of a gallery which space will always be insufficient to contain the (threatening?) impulse which animate the unstoppable expansion of nature.

But, as if we were descending always more deeply,-or climbing always higher-, on the many gradation of seeing, we become aware that this acorn that puts us in front of the Aristotelian concepts of energeia and entelechia, that this stringed drop beads which turn the rain into something as precious as a jewel, that this concentrical circles of artificial pearls that remind us of the crests and troughs of radio waves, display, in conjunction, the invisible forces that shape nature, as a cartography of the invisible. We then realize that that which María José de la Macorra invites us to contemplate has less to do with what we generally understand by nature (a sort of extended landscape), than with the much deeper concept that is enclosed in the word physis. Anyone could recall that this Greek word comes from the verb phuein, which means “to be born”, “to grow”, these concepts showing the capacity of nature to give birth continually to the totality of phenomena, as natura naturans. Thus, it is as if the sculptures of Maria José de la Macorra would be able to raise us to the level of reflection required by the philosophy of nature, in the sense that was given to this expression within German romanticism, a tradition that Klee had probably still in mind when he wrote his well-known phrase: “art doesn’t render the visible but renders visible”.

Ramas, 2009, madera de eucalipto cortada y ensamblada, medidas variables.

The realm of the living is a mystery, and by inquiring in it through her artistic activity, María José de la Macorra seems to have found again that which, perhaps, could have been her very first vocation: biology. One likes to imagine that if she had chosen that discipline, she would have set herself to the study of morphogenesis, a branch of this science whose purpose is to understand the process by which organic forms are produced in nature. Big sheaths whose sensual connotations couldn’t be denied and gigantic cocoons in which a human being could snuggle as if in deep uteruses testify of her interest for the marvelous process of birth and growth, in particular of our own body, which beauty Maria José de la Macorra also invites us to contemplate. To do this, however, she doesn’t stop at its exterior aspect, as would have done a classical sculptor, but on the elements that shape it interiorly, as the bones that structure it. There are also pieces which aspect recalls the glands and refer us to even deeper functions of our organism. All of this could allow us to speak of the erotic dimension of this work, although, here again, we would have to extend the meaning of eros, to the universal impulse that brings the physis to create life from itself.

It is perhaps only after understanding the fascination of Maria José de la Macorra for the miraculous process of the reproduction and multiplication of the living organisms that one perceives the importance that she gives to the liquid element, and more precisely water, as it is well shown, not only in pieces as Aguacero, or Spheres within spheres, but also by her reinterpretations of Hokusai’s wave of Kanagawa. If this great crest could evoke the idea of flux and reflux that seems to govern many of the biological processes, as the heart’s systole and diastole or the rhythm of our own breath, it evidences above all the fractal aspect of the foam of the waves. The fact that its magnificent motifs are destined to disappear almost at the very moment in which they are formed, again and again, could somehow allude to those oriental doctrines which, by stressing the transient aspect of every phenomenon, including our own life, have the paradoxical effect of revealing simultaneously the unspeakable beauty of that which exists. If the artist admits that the Chinese poet Wang Wei, of the Tang dynasty, had some kind of influence in at least some of her works, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that her own artistic activity is a sort of contemplative poetry, that, more immediately than science and philosophy, can make us see the miracle of life. Whether one may agree or not with the idea that the work of art has necessarily to obey to a social purpose, one may say about Maria José de la Macorra’s work, that its efficacy lies in this precise type of radical awareness.