artnexus #20

María Fernanda Cardoso habitually uses nature in her work: flies, lizards, toads, and sea horses have played a leading role in her installations. Now the protagonists are fleas, in a work entitled The Cardoso Flea Circus, which was recently presented at the Exploratorium, the San Francisco Science Arts and Human Perception Museum. The show will visit other cities.

Her circus is the result of careful research not only into the fleas but into the existence of earlier flea circuses. She gathered together all the information she could find: how far they could jump and at what speed, how to attract them from light into darkness, how to make them walk along a tight rope, etc.

She also inquired into the existence ofearlier circuses and discovered that such entertainments had existed for over 300 years, although from the 1950s, the time of Professor Hercker's circus in New York, they have been disappearing. Cardoso's idea, as she herself has said, is based on the relationship between art and life, as expressed through her work with fleas. Despite the undeniable humor of the flea circus, her intention is more comprehensive, making her work a metaphor for the relationship between man and nature.

IVONNE PINI