Marina Nuñez
Marina Núñez, Palencia 1966
Lives and works in Madrid and Pontevedra
Marina is part of the 90s generation of artists and started her career in painting before turning to photography and video. Her work in the last two decades has centered on women’s evolution in architecture and fantastic landscapes using 3D technology. Her initial interest in the disasterous has turned to posthumous scenarios in which there are no passive essences, everything is skin and metamorphosis: surfaces in permanent transformation where sorrow clamours its moment.
The musical collaboration of Luis de la Torre is crucial in the selected videos produced between 2019 and 2021.
Inmersion 1, 2019. 3’31”
Absolutely hypnotic. Thanks to the music we glide towards the interior of an ornamental architecture, reminiscently mozarabic, seemingly of stone yet perhaps merely of ash to discover posthumous solitude. Ursula K. Le Guin, the referential writer for Marina Núñez in the tale Acacia Seeds. And Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics, 1974 talks of a geolinguisitic future that ignores “the delicate, transient lyrics of the lichen, but will read beneath it the still less communicative, still more passive, wholly atemporal, cold, volcanic poetry of the rocks: each one a word spoken, how long ago, by the earth itself, in the immense solitude, the immenser community, of space”.
Jardín salvaje 3, 12 y 13, 2019. 2’ 04’’ each
Marina has created up to fifteen variations of Jardín Salvaje uninhabited by posthumous beings. On a background landscape in black (charred perhaps) and white, we are spellbound by the endless magmatic change. Death is not absolute. The centrifugal energy is constantly transformed.
Quietas 1, 4 y 6, 2021. 2’ each
From among the some ten versions of Quietas the three chosen show the same postmortem voyage from various angles and perspectives. The requiem sound-track does not hamper the powerful ambiguity of this Ophelia, as an almost placid and sensual Venus, suspended in a weightless and interstellar voyage while metamorphosis gently takes place. The disquieting hair, incorrupt in death, keeping her still, transforms itself in plant-like filaments, begetting a new powerful life.
A large tryptic of this image also exists, drawn in white on stamped wood, entitled Marejada.
Rocío de la Villa
Translated by Diana Mathieson
Statement
Marina Núñez represents in her works beings which are different, aberrant, monstrous, those who exist outside or against the canon. The anomalous bodies that populate her paintings, digital images or videos tell us about a metamorphic, hybrid, multiple identity. She recreates a destabilized and impure subjetivity for whom otherness is not something alien, but basically constituent of human being.
Bio
She has exhibited individually in significant public institutions such as: Reina Sofía Nacional Museum (1997, Madrid), La Gallera (1998, Valencia), Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation (2000, Palma de Mallorca), Veronicas Church (2001, Murcia), DA2 (2002, Salamanca), Casa de America (2004, Madrid), Cervantes Institute (2006, Paris), La Panera (2008, Lleida), MUSAC (2009, León), Centre del Carme (2010, Valencia), Sala Rekalde (2011, Bilbao), Patio Herreriano Museum (2012, Valladolid), Sala Alcalá 31 (2015, Madrid), Artium (2016, Vitoria), Cortes de Castilla y León (2016, Valladolid), Palacio de la Madraza (2016, Granada), Es Baluard, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, (2017, Palma de Mallorca), IVAM (2017, Valencia), Museo Barjola Chapel (2017, Gijón), Puertas de Castilla Center (2019, Murcia), TEA (2019, Tenerife) Sala Atín Aya (2019, Sevilla), Sala Kubo Kutxa (2021, San Sebastián), Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (2021, Madrid)“.
Collective exhibitions will include: «Transgenéric@s» (1998, Koldo Mitxelena Kulturnea, San Sebastián), “La realidad y el deseo” (1999, Fundación Miró, Barcelona), “Zona F” (2000, Espai d´Art Contemporani, Castelló), “I Bienal Internacional de Arte” (2000, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires), “Ofelias y Ulises. En torno al arte español contemporáneo” (2001, Antichi Granei, Giudecca, Venice), “Big Sur. Neue Spanische Kunst” (2002, Hamburger Banhof, Berlin), “Pain; passion, compassion, sensibility” (2004, Science Museum, London), “Posthumous choreographies” (2005, White Box, New York), “Identidades críticas” (2006, Patio Herreriano, Valladolid), “Pintura mutante” (2007, MARCO, Vigo), “Banquete (nodos y redes)” (2009, Laboral, Gijón, y 2010, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany), «Skin», (2010, Wellcome Collection, London), «Genealogías feministas en el arte español: 1960-2010» (2012, Musac, León), «Monstruo. Historias, promesas y derivas» (2013, Fundación Chirivella Soriano, Valencia), «La imagen fantástica» (2014, Sala Kubo-kutxa, San Sebastián), «Gender in art» (2015, MOCAK, Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Poland), «Modelli Immaginari» (2017, Palazzo Riso, Palermo, Italy), «Naturel pas naturel» (2018, Palais Fesch, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ajaccio, Corse, France), «Mind Temple» (2018, MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai), «The Time of the Chimeras” (2022, 59 Venice Biennale Arte Official Selection, Cameroon Pavilion, Palazzo Ca´ Bernardo), “Crypto Art: A New Possibility” (2023, CAFA Art Museum, Beijing).
Her work is part of significant private and public collections of contemporary art, among which are: Reina Sofía National Museum in Madrid, Artium in Vitoria, MUSAC in Leon, Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, TEA in Tenerife, Es Baluard in Palma de Mallorca, Fundación La Caixa, Fundación Botín, Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, The Katzen Art´s Center, American University Museum, in Washington DC, FRAC (Fonds régional d’art contemporain) in Corse, France.
She is a professor at Fine Arts Faculty, Vigo University.
