María Berrío pertenece a una generación de artistas que utiliza el cuerpo femenino para explorar problemas sociales y políticos más generales a través del realismo mágico. Sus pinturas a gran escala evocan paisajes idílicos en los que los personajes femeninos interactúan de forma activa con los espectadores, subvirtiendo la mirada masculina y mostrando su poder y vulnerabilidad. Representan a la mujer en seductores escenarios naturales, participando en actividades que dan una sensación de compás de espera o de incertidumbre, y a menudo vestidas con telas que aluden al folclor y la mitología sudamericanos de grupos de minoría tales como el pueblo Kogi de Santa Marta, Colombia.
En Anemochory, Berrío insinúa un ambiente desértico pintando un árbol de sangre de dragón, una especie nativa de la isla de Socotra en el Océano Índico. La cualidad invertida de sus raíces sugiere una referencia a los inmigrantes. Las figuras en la pintura dan la impresión de hallarse en un ambiente onírico, en un estado de suspensión. Considerando el interés de Berrío en representar a los inmigrantes desterrados, Anemochory se puede interpretar como una representación del camino incierto, aunque esperanzador, por el que se aventuran los migrantes, encarnado aquí por el paisaje y por las acciones de los personajes, que transmiten la idea de estar esperando por el próximo paso en esa travesía.
Identificación
Título
Anemochory (Anemocoria)
Fecha de producción
2019
Número de objeto
2019.014
Credit Line
Colección del Pérez Art Museum Miami, adquisición del museo con fondos proporcionados por el PAMM Collectors Council
Collage con papeles japoneses y pintura de acuarela sobre lienzo
Dimensiones
77 x 120 pulgadas
Descripción visual
Anemochory is a collage with Japanese paper and watercolor paint on canvas. It is approximately six and half feet tall by ten feet wide and two inches deep. The multimedia painting is made with pieces of paper that have been dyed with watercolor paint, then cut and paste onto its canvas support. This gives the work a flat, storybook quality. As if the setting were timeless, it depicts an idyllic landscape made of bright pastel colors with two figures. At the center of the painting, there is a dragon blood tree, which is characterized by its mushroom-like canopy and series of sprawling tree branches that look like inverted roots underneath its foliage. In the background, we see mountains of various colors, ranging from golden to bright turmeric yellows, ocean blues, and pale lilacs. This river of color bleeds into the foreground, where it meets a field of grass collaged of several small cut-out rectangular shapes of various tones of green. The pattern of the collage mimics the blades of grass while simultaneously looking like a furious scribble across the bottom half of the canvas. On the bottom left, a young person sits at a chestnut-colored school desk. They look directly at the viewer with a blank expression and red painted lips with their body slightly turning away to the right. This person wears a greenish turquoise dress with a repeating circle pattern and a brown cardigan that appears to be covered in small pink flowers that look like cherry blossoms. They have black hair with short straight bangs that is styled into small braids that dangle down to their shoulders. At the end of the two braids that frame this person’s face, there appear to be fleshy pink blobs about the size of a fist that resemble two lungs. The hair at the end of the two braids seamlessly grows into these fleshy blobs resembling tiny roots or capillaries. The young person’s right arm is bent at ninety degrees and rests on the school desk table. They hold a yellow butterfly in their hand. To the right, and directly across is another young person laying on a full-sized bed, legs dangling off the side closest to the person sitting at the desk. This second person looks upwards toward the sky, as if in a daydream. They have nearly identical facial features to the person sitting at the school desk, also with red painted lips, but have short black hair instead. They are wearing chocolate-colored pants, a pastel pink button-up shirt, and royal blue mules that are patterned with pink cherry blossoms as well. Their left arm is outstretched over their head while the other rests on their chest, their shirt lifting slightly to reveal a pale belly. The bed has an ornate black frame. The mattress is covered in small multicolored dots that look like a floral pattern. The comforter is made of cloud-like inky blacks and grays, out of which there a small group of purple flowers growing, appearing to sway in the wind.