SLOWNESS, Handmade embroidery on paper / 2024

María Valenzuela's work draws on the flight of birds, rivers, cracks, branches. As you walk through her work, it's inevitable that at some point you'll find yourself surrounded by a forest. It is always autumn.

M.V is one of those rare slow artists in the frenzy of contemporaneity. A kind of slowness that goes hand in hand with an ancient contemplation; a sort of haiku, where the white of the page is, in itself, a manifesto.

M.V embraces slowness, and yet her embroidered threads seem to have emerged in a single pull. How can a curve made in slow motion be so dynamic?

The artist tells me that for this latest work, she has been researching "figures, statuettes, and representations of women and fertility from various civilizations," and I don't know how to tell her that I already know this because I have seen her work, and it's right there. It speaks to us, sinuously, in that language we practiced for who knows how long before words were ever spoken or written.

Camila Alegría Z.