Melanie Smith’s significance for the Mexican artistic scene from the 1990s onward cannot be underestimated. The artist, who’s body of work transits between one context to another, across a wide range of media –video, painting, performance, photography and beyond – is in conversation with curator and art historian Lassla Esquivel, on the occasion of her exhibition Maria Elena at the UK Mexican Arts Society (1-25 October, 2020).
MARIA ELENA Maria Elena is a small mining town in the Atacama desert, founded in the 1920’s and developed by the Guggenheim’s to produce saltpetre, used for both fertilisers and explosives. The film explores an ongoing interest in the application and obsolescence of industrial modernity. It also traces the impact of the British in the region, who were heavily involved in the extraction processes of nitrates incorporating it into a satellite of an economic global system. The narrative threads a tale of contradicting montage, whereby crystals become stars, a horse’s ear a mountain and enormous beds of nitrate appear as informel abstract paintings, exposing the geological terror of the past and future.
Melanie Smith. María Elena, 2018. Single channel video projection, full HD, color, sound, 24 min. Camera: Julien Devaux and Carlos Andrés Echavarria Alvarez Sound: Felix Blume.
