daniela maría

projects

2024

This archive documents encounters with the earth. Like Ouroboros eating his own tail, the works spin on a an infinite axis of disappearance.

We find “anatomical studies” from unfired clays, a stingray´s skeleton in turmeric dyes, weapons made out of dried palm leaves and driftwood. A shadow puppet show of the Chilean folktale la tenquita maps a version of ecological cosmogony. The materials used are natural and transient and not meant to last. Daniela Maria´s practice is concerned with placing personal mythologies inside scientific frameworks to question established knowledge systems.

The book has no beginning or end, instead each copy rotates endlessly on a ring, mirroring seasonal sequences and the symbiotic relationship between nature and life cycles. Each edition carries a different set of images and texts from which we can generate different stories and infinite dialogues through their reordering.

The yawning delay between the painful reality in Gaza and the lethargic reaction of the west is not just a result of ignorance and inhumanity. The world ́s time is divided in two: on one side, the dawning future of a damaged, unlivable and unjust planet; on the other side, a fading past of imperialistic hubris that still seeks growth, influence, and expansion. These two timelines meet only with the impact of explosives, the combustion of fossil fuels, the heating of the earth, the cleansing of inconvenient populations. At other times they just glide past one another.

peace plates>