S FR E P O RTE R .CO M / ARTS
What Becomes Part of You it. Goatheads, it turns out, became an apropos medium for expressing how our anxieties build up through myriad hurts and barbs, and though it can almost feel worse to remove them than when they first slid sharply into us, at a certain point, addressing them is no longer optional. BY ALEX DE VORE “The way I started understanding it was by a l e x @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m referencing who I was when I was very small,” Maestas continues. “Finding some love for lmost too many goatheads are that kid, some empathy for that time...I was arranged on the chair in a ghostvery nervous as a kid and just hung out at ly shape like a person might make home all the time, so finding empathy for that were they to sit in it. The side table is stacked experience and undressing that I have anxwith witchy and feminist tomes. All along the iety and that’s not bad? It’s been percolating walls of the gallery space at nonprofit Vital awhile.” Space’s Midtown Annex, further works from Maestas first conceived of I’m Sorry (I Albuquerque-based artist Rica Maestas concannot hold you) during a residency with the tinue the goathead theme and, in a plastic Santa Fe Art Institute that adgarbage bag at Maestas’ feet, well dressed labor. The pandemic put over a dozen crocheted goatheads the brakes on the experience, appear ironically soft and plushy. and the body of work evolved. This is I’m Sorry (I cannot hold Part of the evolution came from you), a sort of self-reflection/ the uncomfortable aspects of self-soothing bit of self-portraigrowth. Part of it came from ture and examination meted out Maestas’ philosophy that change through paintings and found inand failure are inevitable. Part of stallation, and it’s the type of show it came from taking a closer look that requires a bit of explanation at the goatheads that accumulatfrom the artist herself. Don’t get ed outside her house and becomconfused—there is much to abing enamored with their shapes sorb and consider in silence, on and spikes; the undulations and your own, from the 11 black cansnowflake-esque quality of being dles that sit beneath the painting these tough and painful pieces of Exorcism with chiles, and even life in this region, with each prethe moody Mijitia in Dreamland, senting different from the last. wherein Maestas painted herself “I learned that they start out as a child, sleeping soundly in a as fruit, like the pit of fruit, and sea of blankets and pillows. At a what you’re looking at is essencertain point, though, you’re going “It’s a show about unearthing—about trying to exorcise or excise the tially the fractured core of a to wonder what’s up with all the mingled personal and historial trauma from the body,” says the artist. very mean peach,” Maestas says. goatheads.
Artist Rica Maestas uses goatheads and curanderismo to explore what sticks and what we must let go
ALEX DE VORE
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“It’s a show about unearthing—about trying to exorcise or excise the mingled personal and historical trauma from the body as well as place,” Maestas explains. “I was excited to have this show because...these pieces all came together at a moment in time when I was in therapy, getting started on meds and beginning to unlearn some gross childhood holdovers and social constructs; and trying to understand myself in more personal spaces and a broader social sphere.” In short, Maestas is incredibly open about her struggles with anxiety. And why shouldn’t she be? Find anyone who doesn’t have some form of panic attack, I’ll wait. No luck? No kidding. In Maestas’ case, her practice became about working through the anxiety, or, at least, finding ways to live with
A&C
“Through their life cycle, they wither down and harden and fracture, which felt very affirming to my own experience. I thought, ‘Oh, this is just the cycle of life, and instead of mourning the lost softness of being a little baby, it’s just a part of your life that you winnow down and disperse and start fresh.’” Thus, Maestas has somehow made the goathead beautiful. In the acrylic and glitter piece “What is love? (Baby, don’t hurt me?),” she highlights a sort of density and depth through goatheads that almost appear to be spinning on the wind. Or take the aforementioned chair piece, dubbed “Boundaries,” which practically screams that a person once sat there, they’ve since winnowed down and dispersed. Maestas closes her solo show this week with a performance piece in the tradition of Yoko Ono or German visual dynamo Ulay. Some of those artists’ work, Maestas explains, has been downright confrontational, and hers will be, too, in a way. Without spoilers, audience members might become participants. In any event, it’s an example of ritual, of which light elements wend their way into the overall show. Those black candles beneath Exorcism with chiles? An homage to curanderismo, or the healing arts most commonly found in parts of Latin America. Maestas explains she even became slightly obsessed with the idea of a botched ritual—the sort of thing that doesn’t quite get the job done. It makes one wonder if we can ever fully heal. “The ‘you’ in the show title is the personal and ancestral traumas,” she says. “This is kind of like an amorphous blob of information and experience. It’s a lot of felt experiences that are not easy to verbalize or haven’t been verbalized. I’m down to have one of many conversations.” I’M SORRY (I CANNOT HOLD YOU) CLOSING PERFORMANCE 6-8 pm Sunday, July 24. Free Vital Spaces Midtown Annex 1600 St. Michael’s Drive, vitalspaces.org
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