LIVIA MARIN

CURRENT + RECENT EXHIBITIONS

The two series, Broken Things and Nomad Patterns, are made from fragments of everyday objects – cups, bowls, jars, pots and the like – that appear as staged somehow indeterminately between something that is about to collapse or has just been restored; between things that have been invested with the attention of care but that also have the appearance of a ruin. These works aim to reflect on aspects of loss and care, disposal and preservation, and on the relationship we develop with the day-to-day objects that populate our everyday lives.

While Broken Things employs commercially available oral and miscellaneous transfer-printed motifs, Nomad Patterns takes as its central figure the well- known motif Willow Pattern, an image of which is taken from second-hand or antique objects and then reproduced by means of a custom-make transfer print.

Livia Marin’s work employs techniques and strategies that are characteristic of Sculpture, Installation and Process Art. Specifically, it employs everyday objects to enquire into the nature of how we relate to material objects in an era dominated by mass-production, standardization and global circulation. Her work was initially informed by the immediate social and political context of Chile in the 1990s that amounted to a transition from a profoundly and overtly disciplinary regime to one of an economic regime with a strongly developed neo-liberal economic agenda. By appropriating mass-market objects her work seeks to offer a reflection on how we particularize our relation to them. She reflects on how, in a secular and materialist society, identities are increasingly designated through material tokens derived from consumerism. This significant, though often overlooked, aspect of contemporary life forms the field of her practice. Central to her work is a trope of estrangement that works to reverse an excess of familiarity engendered in the life of the everyday and by the dictates of the marketplace. She has exhibited widely both in her native Chile and internationally.

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