This abstract sculpture features an amorphous, bulbous shape with a mottled surface of dark and pale tones, resembling natural stone or fossilized material. The irregular, organic form and textural quality suggest a tactile, sensory experience. The artist's technique seems to blend sculptural and geological elements, creating a mysterious, primal object that evokes themes of nature, time, and the human experience. This piece may reflect the artist's exploration of the natural world and the relationship between the earthly and the metaphysical. ...
Manuela de Laborde (b. 1989, CDMX) lives and works in CDMX. At first glance, her work carries aesthetic and pleasure claims, right up to a tenuous range of sensations. However, its presentation is performative - soaked with temporality - and its purpose, conceptual. The work revolves around a quest to locate and isolate concepts built around tangible elements, to then create abstractions that regenerate their image and position their force within a new context. Virtual spaces rise and with them propositions for change. Her practice ponders on presence; greatly inspired by the simplicity of certain formations, the economic and exponential nature of proposals, the power of hosting bodies and the playful air of philosophical reverberations.
De Laborde has had solo and group exhibitions at Jardín 17 Barragán, CDMX, MX; PEANA,CDMX, MX; Galerie Anton Janizewski; Berlin, DEU, among others. She has participated in residencies at Light Cone, Paris, FR; Museo Rufino Tamayo, CDMX, MX; and Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, DE. Her films have been shown in numerous festivals including the New York Film Festival, NY, US; the BFI, London, UK; FICUNAM,CDMX, MX; MoMa, New York, US. De Laborde has been awarded GRAND PRIX at 25fps Zagreb and JURY AWARD at 24th CUFF. She just finalized her first feature The Backbone of Loss; as well as, attended Atelier 105 - Post production residency with experimental documentary of Havana, CU. She was in charge of realizing the visuals for Camila Fuch during Mutek in CDMX, MX. ...
Since its opening in 2017, PEANA has served as a platform for multidisciplinary production and research of emerging Mexican contemporary art, with a strong emphasis on experimental practices. A recurring characteristic of the artists they support is the continuous evolution of the artistic lineage of conceptual rigorously expressions that are grounded in the plasticity of the artwork’s materiality. Through its off-site and group exhibitions PEANA is interested in the curatorial practice as cultural synthesis that bridges historicized art practices to emerging ones from Mexico and abroad. ...
