Mariela Scafati
Paisaje Invertido (Inverted Landscape), 2021

Artist
Mariela Scafati

Title
Paisaje Invertido (Inverted Landscape)

Year of creation
2021

Technique and dimensions
acrylic on 6 canvases, rope, pulleys, size variable

Year of acquisition
2021

Acquisition of the foundation

The painter, printmaker and queer activist Mariela Scafati uses unframed, monochrome canvases to create three-dimensional objects and installations that reinterpret traditional genres such as portrait or landscape painting.

The work Pienso en tu pelo (I think of your hair) hangs from the ceiling on a rope. Additional ropes are knotted around some of the canvases in the style of Japanese bondage. The ensemble evokes the image of a bound body hanging upside down from the ceiling. This opens up various possible interpretations: Is the figure exposed to physical violence, as if in torture? Or is there something more playful about the pose? As in other works, the proportion is based on the size of a specific person from the artist's environment or, as in this case, on the body size of the artist herself. In contrast, the work Paisaje invertido (Inverted landscape)

on the genre of landscape painting. Here six paintings in different, dark shades of blue and at different angles hang under the ceiling. Viewed from below, they combine to form an inverted landscape. The monochrome canvases are painted exclusively with a brush and in several layers. Mariela Scafati uses painting as a medium of memory and processing what she has experienced. This also includes the artist's regular political activities on the streets of Buenos Aires, in which she has participated since the early 2000s and is involved within various collectives of the local LGBTQI+ community. She reflects on art, activism and community in the drawings in red and pink tones entitled Algo se rompi (Something broke) : 2011 - Windows - 2021 (German: Something is broken: 2011 - Window - 2021), which provide an insight enter into the thinking of Mariela Scafati.

- gk