Mara Castilho

Galeria 111 (Lisboa)
Mara Castilho: Trapped inside my head

Really, the question posed by the nature of the work Trapped inside my head by Mara Castilho, showing at 111 gallery, does not differ from that of the purpose of the sacrifice – an offering to death. Being trapped inside oneself it is an unpleasant situation it is hard to escape, while in the act of becoming trapped, one gives up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more worthy, in order to persuade someone to do something that they would not otherwise want to do, by means of deception.

The first thing we notice is a video installation, Untitled (2008), which projects a human figure on to the floor. Tranquillity lends strength and a sense of peacefulness surround a prostate, nude woman with anxious breathing, suggesting nature’s fertility. However, this projected body lying on a green carpet of turf traces back to fields where thousands of death bodies lie, testimonies from the Balkans war.

However, on the other side of the exhibition space, the video projection Sarajevo: Walking Through Rubble (2008), show us a half-naked body on a transparent morphogenesis surface. This work makes reference to the thousand of bodies thrown in to Sarajevo river, while streaming images of decay and destruction pass in slow motion.
But in the work that entitle the exhibition Trapped inside my head (2008) – two plasma screens – the sacrifice remains open to the representation of what repels us.

The exhibition is accompanied by two more works, however the whole assemblage – the object, the subject and the observer – does not differ substantially from what the Aztecs had came to see at the base of a pyramid, where the victim’s heart was to be torn out. It is the testimony that we follow a lineage of sacrifices, sacred murders made by the thousands. Art may have finally liberated itself from the service of political dictates but it maintains it servitude with regard to horror. Castilho’s art puts us on the path of complete destruction and suspends us in time – it offers pure pleasure without real death.

Published at Lapiz, Revista Internacional de Arte. Año XXVIII, Núm. 250_1 (184), Febrero_Marzo 2009 España © Mara Castilho (left): "Waiting I", 2008, impresion en caja de luz, 44x70cm; (right) "Untitled", 2008, impresión sobre tela, 80,5x119,5cm.