Maritza López, a prominent figure in the world of photography and a winner of the INBA Photography Biennial in 1980, shares that the exhibition features work that was previously unable to be displayed due to censorship of nudity. At the time, there were no galleries willing to display such content, and only a few posts were willing to showcase it. On a rare occasion, the work was featured on the cover of the Magazine of the University of Mexico. Photo by José Antonio López
The exhibition Of wind and matter, showcased at the Museum of Modern Art (MAM), presents the work of photographer Maritza López. The body, light and multiple imaginaries that present nudes as spaces of poetic evocation are all key elements of her work.
The exhibition consists of 30 images spanning from 1984 to 2014, where López plays with movement, texture, contrasts and the shape of bodies, most of them belonging to choreographers and dancers.
In an interview, Maritza López explains, I started working with black and white photography a long time ago because I feel that there is greater effectiveness with contrasts; Furthermore, I do everything in my studio. I use lighting a lot to create chiaroscuros that give a greater effect at an expressive level.
Among the selected photographs is a series that she took 25 years ago, when the intervened image was fashionable. This series involves taking a photo, submerging it in a substance and then painting some parts of it.
She adds, At that time you could already intervene your photos with liquids in the analog system; there was a return to piezography; There were many old processes and I took advantage of that series that I already had to intervene and achieve that sepia effect, which is more of a stain that leads to that result.
López, who in 1980 won the Photography Biennial of the National Institute of Fine Arts (then INBA), reflects on the exhibition and shares, “This is work that at the time was not recognized and could not be exhibited for reasons of censorship of nudes since there were no galleries that wanted to exhibit it; There were only a couple of posts. Something once appeared on the cover of the Magazine of the University of Mexico.
Discussing her work, López indicates that They are bodies that sometimes speak of eroticism; They have a certain erotic intention. This is a formal experiment with bodies that I make fly, that are in the air
.
For López, working with dancers and choreographers is easier because, beyond aesthetics, They are freer and do not have any problem getting naked; They are even proactive when it comes to making the images. It’s nice that when you propose something, they then suggest movements and the result is surprising; So, I never used models. In the images there are several dancers, such as the choreographer Raúl Parrao, with whom I worked a lot; There is also a very well-known sculptor
.
Reflecting on the series of intervened photographs, Maritza López mentioned that she took some with a young French woman, who wrote a love letter in acrylic. From this, she took some phrases and cut them into small pieces, then superimposed them when printing, resulting in a sepia effect. That was the experimental part that we were doing at that time, the large formats had already passed and they also became fashionable and the question of changing the photos was at its peak.
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The exhibition Maritza López: Of wind and matter is made up of mostly analog photographs due to the time in which they were taken; However, there is a digital one that was part of the book heart muscle, in which the work of several artists was presented.
In the exhibition there is only one image from that publication that is digital, but all the material was in analog system, intervened photography, in black and white, except the series of sepia images
, details the artist.
Curated by Katnira Bello, Maritza López: Of wind and matter is an exhibition where the skin occasionally transforms into an abstract landscape, or the characters suggest narratives of illusory worlds and parallel realities, in which we are immersed with a mere glance.
The photographer appreciates the efforts of the venue’s director, Natalia Pollak, in creating a space for these exhibitions, such as Radical Imaginations: A Dissident Reading of the MAM Collection and now the nude photographs. It is opening to other criteria and exhibitors
, she adds.
“The idea was to showcase the nude images in the air that I started in the 80s, like the series The Angels, where I worked with the choreographer Raúl Parrao, with whom I had a lot of communication and was working for a long time, but there are also dance works by Jaime Blanc, for example,” explains the artist.
Martiza López: Of wind and matter will be displayed from now until May 17 in the Manuel Álvarez Bravo photography room of the MAM (Paseo de la Reforma corner Gandhi. First section of the Bosque de Chapultepec).
