The company carried out by Marina Vargas (Granada, 1980) In this magnificent individual was arduous by lto complexity and commitment: make visible women hidden throughout history and, at the same time, publicize the best of their … Work through a story that dialogues with classic pieces from the Thyssen collection on two floors.
In the first, integrate them into your body; In the second, the permanent rooms with previous works (‘ibras’, ‘is over’ …). The work with the curator has been key in the elaboration of a very spunic speech where they are intertwined Historical and current female referents; Official religions and esoteric practices, ancient and new works (about 30); Personal catharsis and collective empowerment.
María Magdalena is the central axis of the sample that branches in various women excluded from the hegemonic story of the sacred (Enheduanna, Isis …) and many others who have inspired Vargas (from Hildegarda de Bingen to Jenni Hermoso). Magdalena witnessed how Christ returned from death; Death, in Aramaic it means ‘appear elsewhere’; Premise from which the artist starts to place her works in the holes left by Thyssen’s works.
Read the cards
The individual itself is divided into Three themed rooms (‘word’, ‘vision’, ‘body’) and a fourth like climax. Each concept is linked to a huge pictorial letter of the tarot corresponding to a real 2023 roll. The first is governed by the Emperor’s arcane, the authority that gives and removes the word. In front, several hands lines create a feminist genealogy in sign language (silences also speak) through phrases such as ‘patriarchy has God on his part’ (Kate Millet) or ‘I am not afraid, I was born for this’ (Juana de Arco).
The courage is expressed in the achievement of the artist of sublimating cancer disease through art, as we can see in various elements of the next room, ‘vision’, dedicated to ways of mediating with the future. The chilling sculptures of ‘exvotes’, made with gold -bathed radiotherapy molds, are a kind of divers that immerse us in the depths of pain. The marine resonates on the altar with snails (Yoruba oracle) on a Moroccan inspiration carpet (the Muslim prayer) and ceramic crabs, flanked by the couple of Ángeles de Della Robbia (1510), which discover brains inside (symbol of intuition).
The letter from El Mundo, presiding over this space, refers to the triumphal end of a cycle thanks to the force, the arrange -protagonist of the third room. In it, the double inverted piety shows Magdalena dead in the arms of Christ: his body has transcended and leaves us his legacy, the only gospel with the name of a woman.
Marina Vargas
‘Revelations’. Tyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Madrid. Paseo del Prado, 8. Commissioner: Semíramis González. Until May 4. Four stars.
A great photo of a mastentomized chest‘Noli Me Tagere’, gives way to the last black room full of silver drawings of the tarot letters that have appeared to the artist in her consultations and that represent her life trajectory. In the center, the ‘Egyptian Santa Maria’ by Salvador Carmona (s. XVIII), jewel borrowed by the Valladolid Sculpture Museum, It becomes a wise that presence all the way while a voice reads the meaning of each card.
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