A reflection on identity. A continuous search for what is not readily visible, what is closed, what is secluded, dreams. Creating with intensity and truth, to unveil an individual inner world that is ultimately diluted within that which lies around it. Amongst the variety of materials used by Teresa Matas for the elaboration of her artistic work, there is textile; along with scissors, needle and thread, paper and painting, which engage in limitless battle with each other on her work table. For her performance activity, she uses her body as instrument and material for the production of art, obsessively and painstakingly transporting, accumulating, emptying and hammering.
Teresa MATAS began the XXI century with an installation at the Fundación Pilar y Joan Miró, Número 55 bajos, inspired in the myth of Plato's cave. She turned the cave into the bedroom of a house, and reduced the characters of the parable to the figure of a woman being subjected to domestic imprisonment. Such was the impact of Alejandra Pizarnik's diaries on her that she was driven to pay homage to her in an exhibiting room of Bonn's Kuntsmuseum, bringing together objects created by her, hanging on the wall, alongside fragments of her poetry. She looked back on fifteen years of her work (1991-2006) in the retrospective Abriendo cerrando, cerrando, abriendo, staged on the main floor of Casal Solleric (Palma). Throughout those ten rooms of exhibiting space, she wrote on the walls, on cloth, on the floor. Spaces for reflection. In the exhibition In-Flux (2008), in the London district of Brick Lane, she placed innumerable clay recipients along the floor and invited spectators to relieve themselves in them.
The following year, In-Flux was put on in Scotland, at the Summerlee Museum. For that new exhibiting arena, she used six sculpted-dresses hanging from a wall and a Bedouin tent, built with several pieces of that same cloth, to make the cold industrial setting more homely. At the Centro de Documentación y Museo Textil de Terrassa (Catalonia), with Zurcir el alma (2010), she had the opportunity to show a good selection of her textile sculpture works. She built a fenced-off garden at the Galería Lluc Fluxà, El Jardín (2011), and at the Galería Louis 21, with Scissors (2012) she presented a very representative sample of her work, showing all her artistic resources. Her most recent exhibitions have been held at the Galería Xavier Fiol (Palma, 2015) and the Kunst Galerie Fürst (Germany, 2016).
“After the death of my son in a car accident, I went through something really indescribable. Locked away in my studio, I tried to create graphic symbols that allowed me to live and relive that fatal moment of impact, to feel that I was at his side, to protect him and be with him through his definitive crossing. Gripped with anguish, one night I went out to photograph cars in movement. At a particular street intersection, I stood in such a way as to capture the moment in which the cars would be coming at me, in order to be so dazed that at one point I am blinded by a white light. I put together a collection of photographs and after they were enlarged I started drawing on them with a pencil and a white marker. I just went with the flow and ended up constructing starry nights. A selection of those photographs has been published in the art magazine ESOPUS:22, edited out of New York (2015).”
When she began the new project for RE-ACTION, ¿Y si nos vestimos de rojo? her struggle bore fruit, as she was offered the opportunity to transfer to the battle field many of the weapons she possesses.
Teresa Matas lives and works in Majorca (Spain).
Teresa MATAS began the XXI century with an installation at the Fundación Pilar y Joan Miró, Número 55 bajos, inspired in the myth of Plato's cave. She turned the cave into the bedroom of a house, and reduced the characters of the parable to the figure of a woman being subjected to domestic imprisonment. Such was the impact of Alejandra Pizarnik's diaries on her that she was driven to pay homage to her in an exhibiting room of Bonn's Kuntsmuseum, bringing together objects created by her, hanging on the wall, alongside fragments of her poetry. She looked back on fifteen years of her work (1991-2006) in the retrospective Abriendo cerrando, cerrando, abriendo, staged on the main floor of Casal Solleric (Palma). Throughout those ten rooms of exhibiting space, she wrote on the walls, on cloth, on the floor. Spaces for reflection. In the exhibition In-Flux (2008), in the London district of Brick Lane, she placed innumerable clay recipients along the floor and invited spectators to relieve themselves in them.
The following year, In-Flux was put on in Scotland, at the Summerlee Museum. For that new exhibiting arena, she used six sculpted-dresses hanging from a wall and a Bedouin tent, built with several pieces of that same cloth, to make the cold industrial setting more homely. At the Centro de Documentación y Museo Textil de Terrassa (Catalonia), with Zurcir el alma (2010), she had the opportunity to show a good selection of her textile sculpture works. She built a fenced-off garden at the Galería Lluc Fluxà, El Jardín (2011), and at the Galería Louis 21, with Scissors (2012) she presented a very representative sample of her work, showing all her artistic resources. Her most recent exhibitions have been held at the Galería Xavier Fiol (Palma, 2015) and the Kunst Galerie Fürst (Germany, 2016).
“After the death of my son in a car accident, I went through something really indescribable. Locked away in my studio, I tried to create graphic symbols that allowed me to live and relive that fatal moment of impact, to feel that I was at his side, to protect him and be with him through his definitive crossing. Gripped with anguish, one night I went out to photograph cars in movement. At a particular street intersection, I stood in such a way as to capture the moment in which the cars would be coming at me, in order to be so dazed that at one point I am blinded by a white light. I put together a collection of photographs and after they were enlarged I started drawing on them with a pencil and a white marker. I just went with the flow and ended up constructing starry nights. A selection of those photographs has been published in the art magazine ESOPUS:22, edited out of New York (2015).”
When she began the new project for RE-ACTION, ¿Y si nos vestimos de rojo? her struggle bore fruit, as she was offered the opportunity to transfer to the battle field many of the weapons she possesses.
Teresa Matas lives and works in Majorca (Spain).