CULEBRAS

“CULEBRAS” New Work by Aurora Pellizzi at Salon Acme No. 10 CMDX
presented by JEFF MARFA Marfa, TX

 

Generated from a specifically female embodiment, Aurora Pellizzi’s works; felted, dyed, constructed or woven are both abstract and representational, merging traditional craft techniques with a metaphysical approach to art-making.

In her series, “The Ritual of the Serpent”, created while immersed in the study of indigenous fertility rites, fundamental shapes posture as both sacred vistas and the female anatomy, thwarting our sense of the cosmic order. In Pellizzi’s volumetric geometries, a triangle represent a landscape or a woman, conflating femininity and the earth, embodiment and allegory, figure and ground.

 

Similar to her felted pieces, Pellizzi’s 2022 “Plastex” series, made from plastic bags woven onto grain sacks are highly labor intensive and though elemental in form, intricately fashioned. In contrast to her previous series, while making the seven works presented here, she embraced the limitations of her physicality, forging a new approach to her practice. Unable to engage in the demanding effort of
fabricating weavings during a recent pregnancy, Pellizzi's "CULEBRAS" are constructed in the vernacular tradition of the ready made.

 

“CULEBRAS”, a feminine noun, is a water snake in Mexico and a debt, disorder, game or soap opera in other Spanish-speaking regions. Rather than evoking the occult ceremony of fertility rites and their venomous accomplices as in her earlier work, Pellizzi names this series after a harmless garden dweller, in homage to the everyday creatures and objects found within the confines of our domestic spaces.

 

Silhouettes grounded with Jergas, a hand-loomed striped cloth used for dusting floor tiles, Pellizzi’s imaginative portraits conjure the carnival spirit of Mojigangas, a traditional Mexican parade with processions of characters dressed in drag. Court jester, Hindu Goddess, Bride. Feathered Serpent, Indigenous Girl, Diva, Sloth. With these Shakespearean caricatures - drawn with cheese graters, feather
dusters, drain stoppers, soap dishes, sponges, clothes pins, buckets and mops - Pellizzi creates a cacophony of ruses that emote in colorful gesture, expressing the tenor of our dizzying current moment.

Hiding behind everyday objects reified in masked form, burlesque dignitaries hang from the ceilings and walls of the space reconstructed as ceremonial totems, decorative sculpture, pictorial fields. Jergas, found in any household goods store in Mexico, when stretched, strung and embellished with brooms, brushes, sequins and trim, is offered up as respite, farce, disguise. With their familiar striped clothing,
Aurora’s campy ready-made troupe of flappers, clowns, damsels and newlyweds transcend their everyday materials to emerge as modern archetypes, symbols of our universal cultural lineage.