Exhibitions
Tongue of Fire by Valeria Maculan: where space and body meet
Valeria Maculan is a multidisciplinary visual artist who breaks the traditional boundaries of painting, incorporating materials, gesture and symbolism to rethink the relationship between the body and space with plastic strength and conceptual depth. Her broad and internationally recognized career connects Latin American roots with contemporary European artistic scenes.
From September 11 to 30, the artist participates in the Biennial B with the work Llengua de foc , presented at the Casal de Son Tugores in Alaró under the curatorship of Iñaki Martínez Antelo and Alicia Ventura. Llengua de foc is a textile installation conceived as a scenic device, developed in collaboration with the Bujosa artisan workshop.
The centerpiece of Llengua de foc is an imposing suspended curtain that crosses the entire room, generating a visual and spatial axis that invites the audience to immerse themselves in the work. Inside, the choir's costumes are arranged, accompanied by a series of wooden masks, carefully designed with megaphone-shaped mouths, designed to amplify and project the voice. This combination of textile and sculptural objects is set in motion during the inauguration through a choral action: the performers sing popular songs from the Mallorcan oral tradition, creating a dialogue between past and present, between memory and immediate experience. The work thus constructs a liminal space, located between the performative and the collective, where the materiality of the textile, the presence of the voice and the richness of the popular tradition merge in a poetic and immersive way.
The title refers to the drawings present on the fabrics that form part of the installation. The patterns used recall moving flames, figures that in Mallorca are called flàmules. This detail not only underlines the relationship between form and concept within the work, but also connects with the cultural roots of the island, transforming the fabric into a symbolic vehicle that speaks of memory, energy and collective expression. With this installation, Valeria Maculan manages to articulate a visual and sound language that challenges the separation between artistic object and community experience, inviting the viewer to be part of a contemporary ritual where the body, voice and tradition become a single poetic and plastic story.
Lêngua de foc presents a scene situated between the worlds of textiles, choral music and the symbolic. It is a living work that takes form and energy through the voice, generating a poetics of the “between”: a space where bodies, times, memories and embodied knowledges meet.
