Tangible
2018
On view November 15 - December 14, 2018
Curated by Natalia Viera at Hidrante in Puerto Rico.
Nora Maité Nieves’s work utilizes details of Caribbean architecture and the various places she has lived in Puerto Rico and in the United States by incorporating elements of those domestic spaces into her work. Nieves takes the individual experience of inhabiting or experiencing a space and transforms it into collective one. She presents us with a Tangible familiar feeling of a place of origin, like the familiar sensation of a home.
When we experience Nieves’s work we can see that her perspective moves around the house, exploring its interior and exterior, presenting us with aerial, flat and horizontal points of view. Her paintings invite us to examine the space from above in its entirety and then position us inside, in front and on the back of it, as well as flattening and interconnecting multiple layers.
Her paintings and sculptures invite us to feel present in the moment by contemplating the intrinsic materiality of its mix of textures. Many of the surfaces look familiar, mimicking arquitectonic material qualities, like, cement, tiles, stucco and others. In the same way, she uses the frottage/rubbing technique as a method to transport, transfer, or preserve the details or real objects from a place. She uses fabric and paper with graphite bars to create the frottages on floors, walls, doors, dressers, radiators, AC’s and more, creating a type of archive that records details from places that invite us to feel part of them.
The work of Nora Maité, emerged from the desire to make Tangible a sense of belonging.
"I seek to speak of a sense of belonging or the possibility of taking parts of a place with me through my work". - Nora Maité Nieves
