We can't stop recognizing and exploring those areas of art and culture where recognition of women is yet to be given. Therefore, we welcome the proposal of curator Luiza Texeira de Freitas in Zona Maco Sur 2023, where she extends an invitation to consider works that “are inspired by the concepts of the feminine, the embodiment of women, empowerment and the interrelation of these concepts in a broader spectrum”.

We present the work of two artists, Martha Lucía Ramírez and Radenko Milak, whose projects have long been interested in the representation of women in contemporary art. Both artists share a vision based on the cinematographic image, contemporary narratives relevant to war, human displacement, women’s and minorities' rights and the role played by traditional values of certain groups in today’s society.

For the series ‘Endless Movie’, Milak develops a reflection on the female image from the perspective of cinema, a study that consciously elaborates a dialogue between black and white cinematographic aesthetic, with an emphasis on cult cinema from Eastern Europe and avant-garde European cinema. The aesthetic of these works refers to the moment when a trend such as Italian neorealism granted enormous importance to the feelings of the characters themselves. Milak, by referring to certain ways of describing reality, updates, and questions the character of the historical image. In ‘University of Disaster’ his gaze extends over those breaking moments in the modern world, particularly war, displacement, the environmental crisis, and the identity crisis of body in contemporary culture. His recent work emphasizes leading women in the creative field, particularly women associated with the Bauhaus and the modern architectural avant-garde.

The work of Martha Lucia Ramirez is characterized by her empathy with human emotions; from her feminine condition, she attaches fundamental importance to the expression of feelings, as well as to the great intertwining of solidarity. In the series ‘Hugs’, the tragedy arises from images rescued from family archives. In it, she represents the deep emotion of a mother’s reunion with her children after a kidnapping. The background of these subtle images is to visualize what makes us human; the ability to share joy and sadness, the existence of feelings, and the human possibility of solidarity in a harsh world.

With these two artists, we seek to make clear how aesthetics today aim at the creation of networks of meaning, where the emotional and cognitive tone accompanies sensory perception; a dynamic aesthetic conception that questions, from various positions, what it means to make art today.

Ana Patricia Gómez - Director