Reading books, visiting museums, diving into documentaries provide us with a true cultural journey, in time and space. It was by revisiting other cultures that the artist Mazé Andrade produced her “Aztec Woman”, inspired by the sculpture that represents the Chalchiuhtlic water deity and which is currently located in the Museum of the Americas, in Spain. “I looked for different elements from the original piece, based on some readings I made of Aztec art and, naturally, imprinting my vision of the world, as the artist reframes the surroundings according to his feelings and experiences”, he explains.
Mazé's work participated, throughout 2022 and 2023, in the traveling collective exhibition “The Art of Viajar”, based on the book of the same name by Alain de Botton, curated by Adriana Scartaris and Oscar D´Ambrósio, organized by Coletivo 284 Brasil and 284 Gallery.
The first exhibition took place from June 11th to 30th, 2022 at Casa Odisseia, Jardins neighborhood, São Paulo-SP. Then, at the invitation of the Municipal Department of Culture and Tourism of Cravinhos, it was on display, from the 5th to the 29th of July, at the Centro Cultural Chafi Miguel Salomão, in the municipality of Cravinhos-SP. In August, the works were received by Galeria CH Faria, at Shopping Ribeirão Preto – SP.
In 2023, the exhibition first took place at the Museu da Cidade de Sertãozinho, a listed building in the city of São Paulo. The fifth and final edition of “Arte de Viajar” was held in partnership with Trio Dom, from May to June 2023, at Plaza Cultural, located in Plaza Avenida Shopping, in São José do Rio Preto – SP. In total, the work covered five municipalities in São Paulo. Modeled in clay, the Aztec Woman was cast in liquid clay and finished in various paintings. Five copies of this work were made. Some are available for sale.
Below, text by journalist and art critic Oscar D´Ambrosio about the work Aztec Woman, taken from the exhibition catalogue.
“Getting to know new cultures is a way of revisiting your own certainties to delve into new readings of your own values. When working with an Aztec deity linked to water, as occurs in the present case, there are archetypal universal layers that can be revisited, such as the fact that it, for example, adapts to the most varied containers and the most diverse states (liquid, solid and gaseous). Traveling, in a way, involves the same metaphor: that of always changing who you are and what you seek to be”. Oscar D'Ambrósio.
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