SANTAMARÍA, Elvira

Salt Cartographies
Wednesday October 3 to Friday October 5 Noon to 6 pm
Closing Reception Friday October 5 5 to 7 pm

Salt, being a mineral essential for life, has numerous positive and negative symbolic values across various cultures. Historically, salt has been used as a currency, as gift, as salary, or as punishment and destruction. Currently salt’s role is reduced to health and culinary concerns, but it retains a metaphorical link to elusive psychic processes and realities: change, transformation, formation, disintegration, entropy, catastrophe, regeneration. This durational performance is a cartographic work of memory and reflections focusing on an overwhelming reality of tragic events close to me in relation to México in the North American economic context.

Elvira Santamaría has shown her artwork in festivals, art centres, galleries, museums and public spaces in numerous countries. In 1994 she was awarded first prize at Ex Teresa Arte Actual’s third Festival del Performance for Donation for an igneous force. A member of Black Market International performance art group since 2000, she is also the organizer and curator of various performance art events in México.

Critical review RE:FRAMING by Francesco Gagliardi
Critical review Tender Considerations by Geneviève Wallen