Mari Claudia García

Visual Description: Steel wire remnants from a hand woven eight by eight foot fence hang from screws on the left wall. While on the right wall, six inkjet prints depicting the weaving process are hung in a straight line. A sound cone is hung overhead in the center of the space and projects words associated with labor practices, as well as the sounds of the artist physically constructing the fence.

Curatorial Description: Using a loom made of screws, artist Mari Claudia García, hand wove an eight-by-eight foot fence made of steel wire. The laborious construction of the fence became a meditative process based work, pushing the artist to consider her own relationship with censorship, dissent, refusal, and ultimately resistance. Presented in the final rendition Meditations on Fear, photographs of the labor intensive process of the hand built fence are captured, as well as the unwoven wire remnants displayed hanging on the wall. Additionally, a sound cone plays a recording of the artist’s own voice, stating repetitive action words such as “measuring, drilling, inserting” and the sounds of labor. The final project creates a space for critical reflection, “inviting viewers to contemplate the tension between conformity and individual expression, particularly amidst the current political climate, where struggles over what is permissible or acceptable to say—both in language itself and in the content of speech, intensify. ”

About

Mari Claudia García (b. Cuba, 1989) is a U.S.-based multidisciplinary artist and educator interested in the intersection between arts and politics. She initiated art studies at San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy in Havana, where she attended from 2004 to 2008. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts (2013) and an MA in Formative Processes in Art Education (2018) from the University of the Arts (ISA) in Havana as well. In 2023, she completed her MFA in Sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. Garcia's work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in Cuba, the United States, Germany, Belgium, France, the UK, and Denmark. She is currently an artist-in-residence at SHIFT, hosted by EFA Project Space in New York. She was also a resident at La Isla Residencia in Mexico (2017) and the online program Amalgama-Barcú Residency (2022). The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Cisneros-Fontanals Foundation in Miami have collected her work. Furthermore, her artistic journey is distinguished by various recognitions, with the Society of Presidential Fellows awarded by RISD being among the most recent.