Marina Vargas, artist: “The art system is modulated by camaraderie and the silencing of violence”

The narrow corridor that divides the rooms of the Fernando Pradilla gallery in Madrid is occupied by seven hands made with polychrome polyester resin, in which in sign language the two words that give the work its title can be read from left to right: "It's over".

Made this year, the piece is a resounding declaration of intentions by the Granada artist Marina Vargas (43 years old) in the wake of the Spanish soccer players after the non-consensual kiss of Luis Rubiales to Jenni Hermoso, a cry that has gone around the world. world and which has been fueled by the recent revelations of sexual harassment in the world of cinema, revealed by EL PAÍS.

The piece is part of the exhibition

Anonymous was a Woman

,

which can be visited until March 16.

It had been more than two years since Vargas's recent work had been seen in an exhibition.

Represented in numerous public and private collections, the artist has starred in exhibitions since 2011. A multidisciplinary creator, her installations, sculptures or videos are the result of anthropological research on religions, rituals or sexuality.

From a always feminist point of view, Vargas usually uses the process as a common thread in each of her works.

Drama and beauty go hand in hand in her artistic production.

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An extensive list of individual exhibitions allowed his work to be known in contemporary art museums, such as Las Palmas or Málaga, and in international fairs through his gallery, Javier López & Fer Francés.

But her career came to an unexpected halt in the summer of 2018, at the Santander Art Fair.

Vargas reported having been shouted insulted and slapped by Fernando Francés, then director of the Center for Contemporary Art of Málaga and father of Fer Francés, one of her partners who represented her.

Vargas immediately detailed what happened at the Santander police station and on her Facebook account.

What came next was a succession of disasters that unnecessarily prolonged her suffering because the documentation supporting the complaint (photographs taken with surveillance cameras) was misplaced.

The multidisciplinary artist Marina Vargas portrayed at the Fernando Pradilla Gallery in Madrid.

Santi Burgos

Despite the lack of control due to the loss of documentation, the complaint was admitted for processing in court number 4 of Santander and Fernando Francés resigned from his position as head of the Andalusian museums.

In his sentencing, Judge Luis Enrique García Delgado acknowledged that there was not enough evidence to convict him, but in the text that EL PAÍS has been able to review, it is said that it is unlikely that the artist had invented the argument.

The judge writes that in this case "there is an evidentiary insufficiency derived not so much from the lack of reliability of the complainant's statement as from the objective insufficiency of the body of evidence to undermine the principle of presumption of innocence that protects the accused."

In the rooms where her recent work is now exhibited, Marina Vargas speaks satisfied with the result obtained, although she is still hurt by the abandonment she experienced from several colleagues whom she considered friends.

“I never thought that by filing a complaint a parallel ordeal would begin.

The art system is modulated by camaraderie and the silencing of violence and everything is so fragile that pressure comes for free.

It is enough to have the prospect of a new exhibition before you for you to leave the principles in a drawer and act as if you had not seen anything.

That happened to me".

On her tour of the exhibition, curated by Semíramis González, the artist stops before a sculpture made up of two Tuareg heads coming out of a snake.

These heads turn their backs to the viewer and somehow force them to surround them.

The work is titled

Sibyla la que silba (the one she knows, the one she knows)

and refers to the relationship of the snake with the feminine.

Something that is repudiated in the West and considered powerful in the East.

A type of temple with three large-format collages

, made up of thousands of circular drawings that refer to astrological signs, runes, occult symbols and symbols linked to female deities,

draws attention .

When the image has its tongue sticking out, it means that a secret has been revealed.

The figures sport colorful tattoos that can be seen as scars that certify the mistreatment that many women suffer.

Marina Vargas next to one of her installations that make up the exhibition.

Santi Burgos

Illness and loneliness

A few days after learning the sentence in the trial against the cultural manager, Marina Vargas also learned that she was suffering from breast cancer.

She was operated on and treated at the Doce de Octubre hospital in Madrid.

“In order not to spare me any suffering,” says the artist with great resignation, “all of this happened in the middle of a pandemic.

I had to be alone and isolated in the hospital.

A hospital bacteria delayed her release.

Luckily, when I got home, the most attentive person in the world was waiting for me, my partner.”

Aware of the healing power of art and the importance of sharing feelings, Marina Vargas contacted other women artists who had gone through cancer.

At the moment, there are 15 that have joined together to create Intra-Venus, a support and visibility network based in Madrid.

At the door of the building, a Venus welcomes the visitor.

She is not the classic model because she is missing a breast.

This beautiful woman sculpted on Carrara marble has had a mastectomy.

“This sculpture is performative,” Vargas said at the presentation, “I wanted it to record the imprint of how my body was at that moment, it is also a tribute to all the women who have gone through that moment.”

The sculpture will be one of 28 works signed by women that can be seen in

New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024

,

at the National Museum of Women Artists in Washington.

Abuses in the artistic sector

The exhibition has a lot to do with the feminist demands of Granada.

“

Anonymous was a Woman

is a project, on the one hand, experiential and I could dare to say that it is a work that collects the complaints and narratives of abuse in our sector.

Being an exhibition very much in line with the times we are living in in which there are many of us who decide to break the silence and recognize ourselves and value being a link in a long chain of change.”

The artist adds that in

Anonymous was a Woman,

secrets and denunciations take shape through the mask, an instrument that commands the woman.

“The installation,” she details, “focuses on African pieces as an idea from which to rescue the entire process of the work and to use art as a transformative tool and as catharsis, because that is what a mask is for.”

Each masked woman has a story or a secret revealed.

This is how the second room of the gallery is configured, in which the masks are presented to us in a semicircle, facing the viewer, surrounding them and facing the series of photos in which the masks have been activated and the secrets discovered.

Each person hides with a piece related to the reason why they want to hide.

The installation is completed with a monitor, which captures the feeling of helplessness that many anonymous women suffer.

“It is a video recorded at home in my studio.

There I have been receiving in privacy and creating our ritual so that, like an endless story, all the stories are recorded with the masked voices.

“I invite the viewer to listen and take sides on these issues that many do not want to hear or see.”

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