Exhibitions
Valeria Maculan and the body on the edge
Valeria Maculan presents *The Wet Border *, a project that situates the body within a territory of constant transformation. The Argentine artist constructs an installation composed of fragmented and suspended figures that transforms the exhibition space into an open stage, where sculpture abandons any pretense of stability to become a mobile structure in continuous reorganization. The exhibition can be visited until September 6, 2026.
The articulated and movable pieces occupy a deliberately ambiguous space between sculpture and expanded drawing. They do not function as isolated objects, but rather as elements of a shifting, almost choreographic composition. Each fragment establishes variable relationships with the others and, through its position, modifies the perception of the whole. The result is a silent choreography in which emptiness acquires as much importance as matter.
The project is conceived as a contemporary miniature theater, though without a conventional plot or closed narrative. Maculan constructs an open scene where the figures do not represent specific characters, but rather remain in a state of tension, suspension, and possibility.
It is precisely in this rejection of representation that much of the strength of the proposal lies. The viewer does not observe a scene from a safe distance: the installation includes them. Their movement alters spatial relationships and transforms the experience into something necessarily physical. The work thus does not merely occupy a space, but proposes a perceptual situation.
In recent years, Maculan's work has focused on investigating the human figure as a system under construction. In contrast to the idea of the body as a recognizable and closed unit, the artist proposes an unstable, multiple, and fragmented anatomy. Her bodies always seem to be in a process of assembly and disassembly, as if their identity depended on the relationship between the different parts that compose them.
"I work with the figure as if it were a structure under construction," the artist states. The phrase serves as a declaration of principles for The Wet Border : to build does not mean to achieve a definitive form, but to accept transformation as a condition of existence.
Fragmentation, therefore, does not appear as a sign of loss, but as a form of possibility. Bodily elements lose their conventional anatomical function to acquire plastic autonomy. Suspended and freed from a complete bodily structure, they can establish new relationships, produce unexpected balances, and suggest bodies that have not yet finished forming.
The title also points to that imprecise territory where forms are not fixed. The border does not necessarily separate two spaces; it can be a zone of contact, exchange, and transformation. The "wet" element also introduces an idea of permeability that contrasts with the rigidity traditionally associated with sculpture.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1968, Valeria Maculan lives and works in Madrid. Her career has been linked to both artistic creation and the development of spaces for exchange and independent production. She has received grants from the National Arts Fund and the Kuitca Grant, and has participated in international programs such as the Skowhegan School of Art and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as Matadero Madrid, MACRO in Rosario, and the Rojas Cultural Center. Since 2014, she has also directed ALIMENTACIÓN30, an independent space in Madrid dedicated to contemporary creation and the generation of alternative contexts for artistic production and circulation.
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