installations

patricia villalobos echeverría

mesoparasitio <13°41'33"N 89°14'30"W>
2011
Installation, EPS foam on wall, four-channel audio, custom-designed furniture dimensions variable, four-channel audio rt: 35 min. on loop
Installation view at MARTE, Museo de Arte de El Salvador; San Salvador, El Salvador

mesoparasitio <13°41'33"N 89°14'30"W> is part of a series of site-related installations that invade the exhibition space with multiple elements adhered to the walls. The title combines two Spanish words: mesoparásito and sitio. The first, refers to a type of parasite that lives partially embedded in its host, or between two spaces; the second alludes to a siege or to besiege. The title points to the general coordinates of the Museo de Arte de El Salvador as an exhibition space which serves as host to these camouflaged elements. The installation consists of hundreds of EPS foam sculptures and an audio composition. The sculptures reference outbreaks and eruptions of diverse size and form, some hybrid and alien, others more familiar. The ambient audio is composed of recordings and digital sounds, whose origin oscillates between abstraction and representative sounds of gunshots, helicopters, etc., which have been altered to create, along with the sculptures, a site of contemplation. The work continuously plays between dichotomies: interior/exterior, strange/ familiar, and palpable/invisible. The work examines seemingly inoffensive situations or elements that are simultaneously harmful, to relationships of power and dependency, and to systems of latent movement that may imperceptibly transform an entire entity. The walls become metaphors for sites of infection and contamination where one questions which is the host and which is the noxious agent. The placement and grouping of the sculptures make slight reference to patterns of current global conflict. The piece suggests a perpetual state of transition, malleability and constant movement that reflects our contemporary condition.