carlos motta - corpo fechado - le bastart

Carlos Motta, drilling peepholes in the official history

“The body is a repository of marks”, we are told at one point in one of Carlos Motta‘s visual essays, Lágrimas (2017). Many of the works of this Colombian artist speak about colonial and postcolonial marks, metaphorical scars on flesh and desire, indelible despite the passing of centuries. Jacques Derrida, for whom the concept of cultural “sign” or “scar” was so important, said that it is not possible to escape the Judeo-Christian tradition. Even the death […]

duen sacchi - organoleptico - le bastart

Duen Sacchi, from my parts of the Indies

Duen Sacchi breaks down the old drawers of the colonial history file, reduces the computer furniture to splinters and sets them on fire. From the ashes comes something new because each document left its imprint on the brazier, and that which does not disappear even with fire is the repressed of history, which can not be redeemed. His writing is rhizomatic, it moves with its underground roots evading linear narratives. At the same time, it […]

ana maria maiolino - entrevidas - le bastart

The territory and its layers: gender, nature, body

At the time of the great conquests, modern cartographic science was developed. Felipe II, overwhelmed by the vastness of his territories, commissioned to the best geographer of the time to map the world. So, he could take complete control at a glance, and even maybe dreaming of being a Salvator Mundi with the orb in one hand and blessing with the other. The title of this first modern atlas, Theater of the World (Theatrum Orbis […]

fatima mazmouz - uterus - le bastart

Fatima Mazmouz; the uterus, from a sacred niche to a desecrated territory

The uterus is a restless animal, which if not fertilized in time it moves through the woman body causing havoc wherever it goes: palpitations, seizures… It was that simple the diagnosis that doctors and philosophers such as Hippocrates and Plato attributed to what they called “hysteria”, a Greek term referring to the womb. And centuries go by… and psychoanalysis continued to relate unsatisfied female sexuality with “hysterical” disorders. Actually, the bizarre history of the uterus […]