MACBA visit: María Teresa Hincapié

"SI AQUEST FOS UN PRINCIPI D'INFINIT"

The exposition on the second floor was the one I felt more connected with, despite that, things were difficult to understand. Maybe I would have needed some information about the artist María Hincapié and her work before visiting the museum.

She was very spiritual so, I think that her art is more personal than for the whole. Also, we know that her intention wasn't to be very famous and rich, she just tried to treat with important topics as capitalism, consumerism, education, women, spirituality, expressing herself, etc. This could be the reason why it is difficult to understand, because of the intimacy of her thoughts. She showed to the world that she is authentic, coherent and effective with what she say and do.

She did so many things about meditation as bringing clothes to the museum to find an order. Bringing her things to the museum instead of, for instance, paintings as a way of doing a ritual. To turn those quotidian things into a symbolic action.

She used her body to express, which I think is very powerful.

The two works that I would like to mention are quite linked. The first one is related to transmission which is "Aldea-escuela", in this project she wanted to run away of the materialism, she shared her philosophy and create this place where the community, creativity and spirituality where the most important.

The second one is "Hacia los huicholes Pamparius Pamparius" (1995) which consisted of going to Sierra de Nayarita to do the Peyote ritual with the huichocles. She spent three weeks there sharing the culture with them. When she came back, she built a "house" similar to the ones that these people live in and then she lived there during three days, sharing the experience with the visitants. Her aim was to show that living is more generous in contact with nature. I like this one because it is a criticism of capitalism and the way we are used to live which is every time more and more disconnected from environment, nature, emotions, spirituality...

It is fulfilling that persons like her express these ideas and ways of thinking and doing and I agree that having referents as she is very important in our society.