Georgina Quintana

In her most recent exhibition at the Dómina Chapel of the Ex-Convento de Santo Domingo in Oaxaca, Georgina Quintana continues to develop an artistic language that has been evolving since she was a young and emerging creator during the eighties in Mexico. She integrated reflections on the pre-Columbian past and the New Spain through the Florentine Codex and the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano. The garden adjacent to the Temple of Santo Domingo inspired her to create drawings for artist books and codices. Wooden objects—cut and painted—pay tribute to the richness of folk art from Oaxaca. Harmony and restlessness coexist in the exhibition. Georgina Quintana works simultaneously with enduring and ephemeral elements. The exhibition consists of works created in various mediums, formats and supports among which fabric, wood and paper are predominant. Quintana does not limit her work to permanent surfaces but also creates on the walls with drawings that expand the concepts of other works—fully aware that any drawings the walls of institutions and galleries are destined to eventually disappear at the end of every exhibition. In From the Garden of Codices, she develops a possible extrapolation: viewers can feel that they are the characters painted and that they are invited to use the astrolabe, telescope or balance. In her personal proposals that address gender themes, she introduces the "frill," a singular way of rendering the painted and drawn fabric that is not the smooth canvas on a stretcher, nor is it a loose and wrinkly fabric, but a spackled fabric, drawn and painted and with added metallic eyelets to hang the work—which creates some movement. It is a three dimensional pictorial contribution to pictorial discipline and the theme of gender. Another innovation if the painting with overlapping fabrics, where opacity and transparency articulate a greater or lesser perception of the work. These creations by Georgina Quintana go beyond mixed media, they are deconstructive resolutions. In the paintings the female figure refers to certain women that might have been interested in science, celestial studies and plant species. It is well known that those women that ventured into those disciplines reserved to men were few and far between, and those that did it had to hide it. Thus, each work approaches possible secrets that history reveals from time to time. This exhibition is part the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia to which the Ex-Convento de Santo Domingo is part of. Likewise, From the Garden of Codices differs from other personal shows by Georgina Quintana from 2012 to the present: namely, the monumental interactive installation at the Museo de Historia y Cultura Ambiental in Mexico City; and the installation, paintings and toys at the Museum d Arte de Querétaro. In Oaxaca, the artist focuses on the intimate dimension of the chapel. The authorial line connects the works and leads the gaze to plants, instruments and labyrinths.