María José Arjona

An artist focused on performance, María José Arjona plans to rethink the roles of the movement of matter in space, time, and the duration of that interaction, assuming a perspective that proposes to develop negotiation maneuvers where research and writing are the experimental spaces to develop the reflection. Her work insists on confronting the system, transforming itself into a fundamental tool of provocation and connection with the other, each piece being a set of poetic and choreographic strategies where bodies are the link and the battlefield capable of materializing the repercussions of the clash of forces between them and with the objects that also inhabit the same space, stimulating and transforming themselves in this dynamic. Gestures as a clear manifestation of feelings, needs, states of mind, are an invaluable source for the artist who finds in them a kind of archive that collects and registers emotions within political and social power structures, applying an acute point of view that contemplates philosophical readings in order to emphasize their interest in transition, transformation and becoming as actions of resistance. In her series “White (IN-TRANSIT BERLIN 2009)”, “Vires” (2010), “All the others in me” (2012) and “Lifeline” (2016), Arjona displays a range of performance proposals where the body is always in the center of the scene, though as a vehicle not only for denouncing violence and socio-political problems, but as a promoter of alternative ways of thinking about them, the body as a means of rethinking communication and lack of communication, the messages given for granted, the lack of questioning about thoughts that are given to us and we naturalize without opposing debate. In Arjona’s work, the viewer is invited to assume a physical and intellectual active role.