Maria Jose Arjona. All the others in Me

Maria José Arjona

All the others in me

a cura di Eugenio Viola

Voice Gallery e Riad Dar Chérifa

Evento collaterale ufficiale della 4° Biennale di Marrakech

In the works of Maria Jose Arjona, the body has always a central place, it is a powerful element of the visual communication, energy exchange and a generator of significations.

It is a body investigating on space and time notions through repetitive and non-hierarchical movements.

Our present is passed-through by some complicated phenomena such as the multiculturalism, leading to overpass the traditional concepts of identity, some phenomena that promote a symbiotic and fusional connection with the Other. These are inescapable processes ossified by the society of mass media and by the virtual hypertext.

In the work of Maria José Arjona the body interacts with space to create an experience, which bypasses corporeality with cognitive responses, where the observer becomes the catalyst of a sensorial exchange, beyond the borders between identity and representation.

This is an engaged practice that the Colombian artist presents, ready to violate and transform the limits imposed by the society on the individuals, and caused by violence and fear, some sensations which, unfortunately, still exist in the contemporary society.

All the others in me is a performance functioning as a bridge between misunderstandings. It is a bridge because it doesn’t point at anything specific, it doesn’t resolve the misunderstanding but rather, gives a panoramic, a view, on how we perceive otherness and differences. Distance and cultural diversity are intentionally created, augmented, altered, and manipulated by mass media and other control systems, placing people in a position of submission standardized by the distorting lens of what we call "society of information”.

All the others in me points at this transition of thoughts that we continuously see, live and absorb, but never question. The performance offers one of the most syncretic visions among the numerous stereotypes about the feminine body and its perception in the western and non-western societies.

The artist’s body proposes itself as a result of a metis entity which is continuously in transit, it undertakes a metaphorical travel through a series of possible and never definitive identities to remember, another time, that art exists to exceed differences and accept the diversities.

Maria José Arjona (Bogota, 1973), lives and works in New York.

She is among the most represented latino-american artists. She realized many performances in prestigious institution in Europe, United states and in latin America, such as :

The Museum of Modern And Contemporary Art of Rijeka/Croatia; Museo Del Banco of the Republica of Bogota/Colombia; The Ballroom Marfa of New York/USA; Abramovic Studio At Location One in New York/USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Medellin/Colombia; at the Museo Madre of Napoli /Italy; Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt of Berlin/Germany and the third Triennale di Guangzhou/China.

She also participated at the retrospective of Marina Abramović’s performances at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) of New York/USA and at the residence program of the Watermill Center of New York/USA.