Preface Andre Lee
translated by Jason Lee
Mind Set Art Center (MSAC) is proud to present Filipino artist Marina Cruz's third solo exhibition in Taiwan— Material Maternal—and publish a catalogue of her selected works from 2015 to 2017. Cruz's creations revolve around the memory and history of her family. Her earlier exhibition In the House of Memory had been inspired by the family old house, old things and photos left behind by her family, while the more recent shows, Wear and Tear and Material Maternal, are more closely knit to the fabric scenery itself. The creative evolution of Cruz sees her probing into the stories of personal life and family memories, seeping down to the varying looks of the linings and textures weathered through time, to the local views and presentation of the clothing's details reconnecting with the person who once wore it, becoming at one. From people to objects, then from objects to people, this series is akin to her "family portraits".
These "family portraits" are abound with expressions, but are also a metaphor of the deep meaning behind people and things. They represent Cruz's profiling of her family, as well as the extraction of universal experience of maternal life and the passing down of family heritage. In her recent works of "figurative abstract paintings" depicting clothes, the artist's affiliation to people and things as well as the ways in which these objects express personal emotions and symbolic meanings reminded me of Van Gogh's paintings with shoes as the theme created in Paris circa 1886. Van Gogh's paintings of shoes are regarded as a kind of self-portrait, whereas Cruz's paintings of clothes are also somewhat similar in spirit—they embody her constant personal pursuit and construction of "matriarchal family portraits". The difference is that Van Gogh's shoes are the artist's personal items, evoking a more direct emotional expressiveness to reveal the artist's state of mind, while Cruz's objects are associated with her matrilineal family, and the generation gap allows her to observe and imagine, from a distance, another form of belonging of family and space. These "figurative abstract paintings" are treated to intellectualism and imagination on top of the full-bodied sentimental foundation, thus forming the fading "matriarchal family portraits" that mirror the family history and the passage of time.
Family stories and object memories are the creative source with which Cruz has been weaving over the past decade. This net of fabric is interwoven with stories from three generations of the artist's maternal side; the memories of viewers are also spun into this net when they contemplate the works. The net is organically growing to highlight the details of each piece of clothing and its expressions, as a perpetual illustration of the amalgamation of women's bodies and lives, time and memory, history and scars— the changing landscape of life.
7
織品檔案・紡織繪畫
派崔克・弗洛雷斯 郭書瑄 譯
瑪莉娜．克魯斯對衣物的著迷一直是種感傷，她深陷於對回憶的幻想中，同時也熱切於抬舉物件， 使它們受到倖存物應得的注目。她於是和這些獲得重生的陳舊衣物產生關聯，而不僅是耽溺於懷舊 而已。應該說這是種想望：重建、接著更新的想望，聯繫著從前的、聯繫著將要持續的。前人與當 下兩者形塑了欲望的結構。但這欲望獲得了昇華，就像樟腦丸阻擋了物件的失序程度、衣蛾的繁殖， 以及氧化的開展。
在這種幻想與注目的情況下，有許多層面可以汲取。確實，這裡有她前人的衣物，它們不僅是日 常必需品，亦是呈現風格與外貌的工藝品，是圖案、技巧系統和設計的明確組合。接著，有存放這 些東西的地方，整齊折好、堆疊起來，以便和其他財物並排，承受歲月的考驗。同時，也有更大的 房屋建築和更特定的房間。最後是這幅畫。這類繪畫如何對記憶的使命訴說？
克魯斯的系列必定是藉由這樣的動態成為可能。關鍵在於她對衣物表面的投入。這是個物件，它 的細節被渴切地描繪出來。但這又不僅是個物件。它是種工藝，是衣物也是繪畫的工藝。在這些物 質或物質化的過程中，帶有某種對裝飾與複雜製作的熱忱。
就許多方面而言，克魯斯所做的其實是將衣物處理成微型畫的形式，但卻是大型繪畫的規模。微 型畫的感性意味著她用以指涉居家生活的方式，這是大量由女性佔據、由女性保護，由女性提供衣 物的地方。同時，居家與女性在此形成了一種強勁的脈絡，如同她之前的行動所呈現的。不過，這 個新的系列所引介的是年歲：衣物和女性兩者的年歲增長。正是在這樣的氛圍中，她的繪畫探討且 引述了物質的磨損軌跡。同樣地，在這樣的氣氛中，藝術家試圖進行想像，例如想像她母親的童年， 或是歷史如何介入其中，將身體轉變為其他物件。她對母子間的比較深感興趣。這是種有力的記憶 停頓，因為喚起這記憶的是某種軀殼、某種已克服限制的過往身體的模具。而這個容器持續作為一 種存在的索引。這是克魯斯所繪的索引，一種不久便由裝飾物和穿著時光的痕跡所消除的索引。
特寫是這組系列中的明顯設計，它確保觀者可以看見織品的微縮景象，這些織品因為季節更迭和 最有可能的潮濕環境，無可避免地變得脆弱。磨損、污漬、摺痕、褪色補釘、破爛程度、穿舊跡象 等等。這些都暗示著拆解與物件（衣物）整體的喪失，繪畫因此變得關係重大，因為藝術立即意識 到物質的特色，以及使這些特色得以具體化的力量。在繪畫的舊物件與繪畫的當下直覺之間，無疑 存在著一種似非而是的關係。而在回顧過去的迫切與當前才能紮根於記憶範疇的需求兩者間，克魯 斯如何取得協調？
9
然而，這種微型的視野並不會在某種無生命或靜止的秩序中獲得平息、甚至衰退。克魯斯從過去 的這種微型宇宙中退出，顯露了衣物收藏在櫃子中的照料環境。正是在這一刻，我們透過這些衣物 的保養狀態，想起它們所意味的社交生活。其中重要的是織品承繼與繪畫表現之間的互動，前者經 常被視為古老或古董的，後者則是在當下描繪織品。於是藝術家可能會面對的提問是：此處繪畫所 表達的是什麼？是單純的物件，或是其歷史生命？若是後者，那麼繪畫可能嘗試做到更多，或是可 能或被要求打破其慣例。而克魯斯已承擔了風險，她穿線縫入畫布，以刺繡裝飾顏料，堅持著衣物 工藝的宇宙觀。她也鑄造了組裝人體模型用的真實衣物，讓玩具般的相貌像是穿著華麗服飾的人物。 她也將相片製成薄板，加上文字註解。換句話說，克魯斯的探索已超越了繪畫的期望，也已尋求了 其他傳達衣物回憶的方式。為了達成這些，她改變衣物的款式，或是將衣物置放在文字闡述下，彷 彿作為檔案保存一般，將針線製作衣物的技術和女性狀態的建構赤裸裸地呈現出來。
在這個過程的某一刻，克魯斯作品中的線頭都聚集起來。元素的集合極有可能形成表達的語言。 織品的出現來自於製作、編織和組成的衝動。從這樣的勞動中，出現了敘述—或者更適合的說法 是虛構，以及歷史與個人故事的交織、家譜與軼事的交織。還有轉喻，一如服裝成為肩膀的密碼或 是肚臍的導引。
克魯斯未來的挑戰可能在於將繪畫本身的過程複雜化，讓寫實或表現主義不致成為主要技術，無 論是對感知、或對直覺的記憶，或是在視覺空間中喚出形體方面皆然。她可以思考目前形式的限制， 或甚至重返她創作早期的抽象化嘗試。這種從感性到雕塑性的延伸是很有力的，實際上可能還指向 了超越繪畫的方向。在這方面，這種藉由大量細節使織品變得如微型畫的做法，在服裝或房子的小 塑像裡找到了同樣的表達方式。若藝術家持續有說服力的追求，加上她代表性的感傷變化，她的作 品應能獲得一種空間性，能夠拓展這一切的緯度：繪畫、記憶，以及女性。
10
Fabric Archive, Textile Painting Dr. Patrick D. Flores
The fascination of Marina Cruz with clothes has been sentimental, lost in the reverie of recollection but also keen to hold objects up for the attentiveness that survival deserves. This makes her relationship with clothes - worn over time and salvaged from it - something more than just to indulge nostalgia. It is more properly a longing: that which recovers - and then renews - ties to that which has preceded and to that which has been found to last. Ancestry and presence shape the structure of the desire. But this desire sublimates, like the mothballs that impede the entropy of things, the thriving of mold, the release of oxidation.
There are many aspects to be gleaned in this situation of reverie and attentiveness. Surely, there are the clothes of her forebears, artifacts not only of everyday necessity, but also of style and appearance, a distinct constellation of patterns, systems of skill, designs. Then there is the place where these have been kept, neatly folded, stacked up, made to stand the test of the years and alongside other belongings. There is as well the larger architecture of the house and the more specific room. And finally, the painting. How does this kind of painting speak to the task of memory?
This must be the dynamic that makes the series of Cruz possible. Investment in the surface of the clothes is key. It is the object, and it is portrayed longingly for its details. But it is not mere object. It is some kind of craft, both the clothing and the painting. These materials or materializations partake of a certain kind of devotion to ornament, to the intricacies of facture.
In many ways, what Cruz does is to render the clothes in miniature but on the scale of large painting. This miniaturist sensibility implicates the ways by which she references domestic life that is largely inhabited by women, sheltered by women, clothed by women. And so, home and woman form a robust context here as it had been in her previous sorties. But what this new series introduces is age, the ageing of both cloth and woman. It is in this ambience that painting investigates and cites traces of attrition of the material. It is likewise in this atmosphere that the artist tries to imagine the childhood, for instance, of her mother, of how history has intervened to transform the body into something else. The comparison between the child and the mother intrigues her. This is a telling pause of remembrance because it is evoked by some kind of a shell, a mold of an erstwhile body that has overcome the confinement. And yet, the vessel persists to serve as an index of the presence. It is this index that Cruz paints, an index that is further dissipated by adornment and the evidence of wear and tear.
A device that is discernible in this series is the close-up that ensures a micro view of the fabric that is made inevitably vulnerable by the passage of the seasons and most probably the humidity of the environment.
11
Traces of fraying, stains, deep creases, faded patches, states of threadbareness, signs of being well-worn. These intimations of unraveling and of the loss of integrity of the thing that is the cloth make painting relevant because the art is prompted to be aware of certain characteristics of the material and the forces through which these characteristics are concretized. Without doubt, there is paradox here between the object of painting that is old and the instinct of painting that is current. How does Cruz come to terms with the urgency of looking back and the need to root contemporary talent in the realm of memory?
The micro perspective, however, does not settle, or even languish, in some inert or static order. Cruz pulls out of this microcosm, as it were, to reveal the circumstances of care in which clothes are collected in cabinets. It is at this point that we are reminded of the social life of these clothes as alluded to by the ways of their upkeep. What comes to the fore is the interaction between the heritage of fabric, variously reckoned as antique or vintage, and the performance of painting that depicts it in the present. The question that may be asked of the artist is this: What is it that painting registers? Is it just the object or its historical life? If it were the latter, then painting might endeavor to do more, or might be required to breach its customs. And Cruz has taken risks to insist on the craft cosmology of the clothes by threading into the canvas and embellishing paint with embroidery. She has cast actual clothes to configure mannequins, toy-like resemblances of figures in their finery. She has also laminated photographs and annotated them with texts. In other words, Cruz has ventured beyond the expectations of painting and has sought other means of mediating the memory of clothes. She has done this by laying bare the technology of both cloth making through needle work and the constitution of womanhood itself through the restyling of the dress or subjecting it to textual elaboration as if it were an archival possession.
At some moment in the process, the strands of the project of Cruz come together. And the gathering of the elements may well form the language of the expression. Textile emerges from the impulse of making, of weaving, of fabricating. From this labor comes the narrative, or more apt to say, the fiction, the weaving of history and personal tale, of genealogy and anecdote. And metonymy, too, as attire becomes cipher of shoulder or vector of navel.
The challenge for Cruz in the future might be to complicate the procedure of painting itself so that the realism or the expressionism does not take over as the main technology of perception or of intuiting memory or of conjuring the figure in visual space. She can speculate on the limits of the current form and maybe even revisit her forays into abstraction in the earlier phase of her practice. The extension of the sensitivity to the sculptural is telling and may, in fact, point to directions beyond painting. In this regard, the miniaturization of the fabric through the swarm of detail finds a cognate articulation in the figurine of the dress or the house. If pursued with cogency and inflected with the artist’s signature wistfulness, her project should be able to acquire a spatiality that is much needed to widen the latitude of all these: painting, memory, woman.
12
13
14
「對折 / 攤開」系列 Unfold Series
2010 木板、相片輸出 Laminated photograph 53 × 46 cm × 2
15
伊蒂波塔的洋裝：中空的圓點圖樣 Edilberta's Dress: Dainty Flowers 2012 木板、相片輸出 Laminated potograph 82 × 62.5 cm
16
伊蒂波塔的洋裝：紅色的衣領 Edilberta's Dress: Red Collar
2012 木板、相片輸出 Laminated potograph 82 × 60 cm
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
個人檔案 I & II Personal Archive I and II
2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 182.9 × 243.8 cm
粉紅嬰兒床與櫃 Pink Crib and Pink Cabinets 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 182.9 × 243.8 cm
27
有補丁的方格時光 Checkered Moments with Mended Patches 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 183 × 122 cm
28
29
30
緋紅與疤痕 Blushed and Blemished 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 152.4 × 122 cm
31
褪去的黑白與綻放的色彩 Faded Black and White with Bursts of Colors 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 152.4 × 122 cm
32
33
34
褪色與修補 Faded and Mended 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 152.4 × 122 cm
35
36
37
白領口花園 Flower Garden with White Collar 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 121.9 × 91.4 cm
38
39
她肩頭的重量 Weight on Her Shoulder 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 121.9 × 91.4 cm
40
41
42
晴天的陽光禮服 Sunny Dress for Sunny Weather 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 183 × 102 cm
43
44
45
不完美內在 Imperfect Inside 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 121.9 × 91.4 cm
46
47
她的中心點 Her Navel in the Middle 2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 152.4 × 122 cm
48
49
50
明亮但破碎的花瓣 Bright but Broken Petals
2017 油彩、畫布 Oil on canvas 121.9 × 91.4 cm
51
52
陌生化的熟悉：瑪莉娜．克魯斯的「母系物語」 彭佳慧
1
每個人都是在失去中誕生。
2
我們所收藏的，永遠是我們自己。
藝術家瑪莉娜．克魯斯（Marina Cruz）近十年來的創作，再現手法涵蓋油畫、雕塑、攝影、文字、 刺繡、裝置等複合媒材的探討；但無論選擇何種表現形式，作品中持續聚焦於家族記憶與生命存 在的母題。此次展覽以「母系物語」（Material Maternal）作為切入點，將身為女兒∕母親∕女性 的記憶中，難以界定的多重時間流交疊的狀態，透過家族長輩所留下的舊衣裳，展開回溯家族故 事與個人生命經驗的旅程，以細膩而充滿詩意的手法，與外婆∕母親∕阿姨再次相遇。
母親與女兒間獨特的關聯，不僅是共享同一種性別而已，更相互投射彼此的時代脈絡、家族興 衰與成長經驗。在生命的交集與互動關係中；身為母親，女兒如同另一種形式所新生的自己，以 化身∕分身的姿態，有機會再次經歷自身的童年；身為女兒，不自覺地在淺移默化中模仿與內化 對母親的認同，並在有朝一日也成為母親。在克魯斯的《首件鑄造（母親）》(First Cast: Mother) 作 品中，以小女孩的洋裝作為連結的物件，象徵母親與女兒間特殊的生命交集，母親∕女兒∕女人 間轉換並相互參照對方的生命，產生愛與衝突的矛盾交織。母親心中的內在角色投射與延伸，透 過女兒再次世代交替與傳承。
織品的溫度 這批存放收藏許久的衣服，原是外婆為克魯斯的媽媽和阿姨們，特別手工縫製的童裝；經年累 月，這些孩子早已成人，這批穿不下的舊衣裳仍未被丟棄而收藏在家中的衣櫥裡。攤開這些衣服， 滿佈的收納摺痕，藝術家透過纖細的筆觸和優雅的線條刻畫出這些織品的肌理與花紋，不疾不徐 地細細吐露出身為母親的心境，對孩子幼小時的寵愛，以及長大後仍不忍割捨的依戀。
關於服飾的解讀與詮釋，往往涉及對社會文化符碼的探討，本身就具有一定的語境與歷史；服 飾暗含了不同地域的風俗習慣、階級性別與時代品味。織品衣物成為身體的象徵與隱喻。如果第 一層皮膚代表的是種族與血緣，那麼，如同第二層皮膚的服飾，不僅有避風遮雨的物質功能，衣 服所包裹的還有身體的溫度、動作的線條，攜帶著不同經驗的記憶。因此，作品中描繪的這批外 婆手工縫製的童裝，其視覺訴求的重點並非在於花色與款式的差異性，而是其間隱含和透露的生
1 馬利雍．楊 (Iris Marion Young)，何定照譯，《像女孩那樣丟球 : 論女性身體經驗》，臺北 : 商周， 2007，頁 222。
2 尚．布希亞 (Jean Baudrillard); 林志明譯，《物體系》，臺北 : 時報文化，1997，頁 101。
53
活點滴，巧妙的串連起關於母女三代間的回憶，同時也是家族女性系譜的交集之處。
從畫面中藝術家所仔細描繪的細節，可察覺外婆巧心挑選的花色、精心剪裁的樣式、袖口與鈕扣的 配色、細細的針腳與壓線，在在顯示作為母親所洋溢的愛。而那些衣服上縫補又破損的補丁、斑剝脫 落的縫線、壓艙發霉的斑點、洗不掉的汙漬與褪色的痕跡，則充滿時間性的描寫，彷如織品的年輪， 隨著四季流轉而增生，擴延出與生命經驗有關的痕跡。
回憶的路徑 過去生活記憶中的情境與現實活中的空間相互交疊，跨越時空，揭露並召喚觀者內心不同的觸動。 對於觀看與回憶的互動，約翰．伯格 (John Berger）指出：我們不只看一個東西 ; 我們總在看東西和 3
我們的關係。 克魯斯作品中描繪衣服的花紋樣式、色彩光澤，暗示了衣服的材質與四季的溫度；透 過細細蔓延的皺摺與縫線，如同蜿蜒的山脈與河流，在不同季節的原野起伏，喚起觀者曾有的感受。 在《明亮但破碎的花瓣》（Bright but Broken Petals）中，淺藍底色配上不同的粉色花朵的洋裝，和另 一件《晴天的陽光禮服》（Sunny Dress for Sunny Weather），隨著盛開的花朵恣意奔放，帶有春天溫暖 又活潑的氣息；在《有補丁的方格時光》（Checkered Moment with Mended Patches）衣服上，佈滿車子 與動物的可愛造型圖案，色彩鮮豔而充滿童趣的生命力。作品中浮現的童年回憶與意象，串成展場中 屬於克魯斯的生命旅程，也同時重疊觀者的生命經驗，成為帶有互文性 (intertextuality) 的多層敘事。
藉由畫作中再現的織物細節，克魯斯回溯自身過往的同時，也提供觀者一道獨特的回憶路徑：我們 都曾有過那麼一件，或許是灰褐色的長袖襯杉，在秋風剛起的時候要早晚披上；或許是在冬天被叮嚀 要記得穿上的橄欖綠色小外套；或許也曾有一件穿到褪色、磨破了仍捨不得丟掉的心愛小洋裝。從這 些歷經反覆洗滌卻還存在的汙漬，依稀想起，衣服總是不小心沾染上食物的醬料，或是又打翻了一杯 果汁；依稀想起，那時的新衣裳總是在一開始就預留太大的尺寸，等到合身時，卻又開始縫縫補補； 而一再縫補卻還是破損的磨痕，暗示也許並不富裕的家庭環境，母親愛物惜物地勤儉持家。
彷彿看見母親反覆摺疊、壓縮、收納、打包，一季又一季、一年又一年收藏的節奏與手勢。生命無 法再重來，但回憶卻可以反覆湧現。
陌生化的熟悉 此次於安卓藝術展出的作品中，有十幅描繪衣物布料的油畫，藝術家刻意放大衣服的比例，以截取 的方式構圖，在無法看到完整的剪裁下，形成如特寫般逼視的效果；克魯斯以寫實的技法，將布紋細
3 約翰．伯格 (John Berger) 吳莉君譯，《觀看的方式》，臺北 : 麥田，2010，頁 9。
54
節描繪放大的異常清楚，使視覺的平面性營造出類似標本或壓縮的扁平感。而這些經常被忽視的細節 躍入眼中後，原本日常的服飾不再生活化；熟悉的物件與材料成為象徵的隱喻，視線從作品的空間轉 而遁入意識流的時空，將這些細細刻畫的衣摺與紋路，鋪陳出有別於一般衣物的穿著經驗 : 這些並不 是蓬鬆柔軟的新衣裳。
透過陌生化的手法，藝術家將觀者從原本日常熟悉的物件中抽離，衣服成為交疊的符碼，既貼近又 疏離的形成弔詭的矛盾。在作品《個人檔案 I&II》(Personal Archive I and II）與《粉紅嬰兒床與櫃》(Pink Crib and Pink Cabinets）中，記憶中原有的居家空間呈現出凝滯狀態，服裝被折疊收納擺放成家俱的一 部份，讓孩童時期的居家服擁有不同的時態 : 從屬於過去的記憶場景，轉換為抽象的意念，與作品聯 結自身經驗後，又拉回家中實際的生活場景。層層疊疊所累積的衣服、雜物和家俱，重新組構為新的 記憶圖層，在凝視與冥想之間，以內、外兩種不同的時空記憶與身體感受，來回交織穿梭。
「陌生化」（defamiliarization）一詞是二十世紀初俄國學者什克洛夫斯基（Victor Shklovsky）提 出的美學觀點；最初的意義為「使之陌生」，強調美感可藉由將過於熟悉的知覺感官經驗，拉出適當 的距離而產生。倘若「熟悉」代表一種在知覺經驗中的極度貼近狀態，「陌生」則是熟悉之後的疏離； 然而「陌生化」並非是無知覺或無意識，而是藉由熟悉與陌生間的落差，甚至刻意的反常狀態，以加 強觀者的體驗與感受，刺激過於生活化而逐漸鈍化的視覺美感，進而產生新的啟發與聯結。將熟悉與 陌生之間的兩點移動的時間延長，所拉扯出的張力，使陌生化不僅是一個審美的觀點，也是一種生命 存在的狀態。
看到這些童年服飾的再現，的確會引發觀者的好奇，這些精緻刻畫、充滿時光痕漬的衣裳，曾經穿 戴起的故事。彷彿想起童年時聽到母親 ( 或祖母 / 外婆 ) 隨口哼唱的兒歌，那些講了又講的故事，或 是關於兒時的做過的白日夢。在熟悉與陌生之間的移動，藝術家的回溯與觀者的回憶重疊，用陌生的 手法再現熟悉的事物，從回憶 ( 曾經的現實 ) 中創造出非現實，進而將非現實注入現實之中。
童年生活並非都是歡笑聲，然而，當我們只能用懷念召喚與再現時，更顯得無可取代的美好。斑斕 而美好的時光。
凝視勾起了記憶與愛。這些放大的衣飾細節將記憶的節奏移動得更緩更慢，類似停格的構圖語法， 不只是意象的氛圍，而是情節的濃縮。依柏格森（Henri Bergson）的理論，時間是不可分割的，每一 刻都是獨一無二，那麼「回憶的時光」究竟是什麼 ? 在凝視與凝想的當下，感官構成的意念與印象， 集合並得以捕捉此刻瞬間的記憶，而回憶則是由記憶喚起與重現空間中逝去的時間，過往有過的經驗 與感受。回憶不能複製過往，但透過作品，我們得以相互凝視並與之再生∕共生，這些折疊、折疊、 再攤開的記憶。
55
56
Familiar with Defamiliarization: Marina Cruz’s Material Maternal Dr. Peng, Jia Huei
translated by William Dirks
“Everyone is born in loss.” —Iris Marion Young 1 “For what you really collect is always yourself.” —Jean Baudrillard 2
For around ten years, Marina Cruz has produced mixed media explorations in modes ranging from oil painting, sculpture, photography, and text to embroidery and installations. But in each of these forms, she has maintained a focus on the central themes of life and family memory. Her current collection, Material Maternal, examines the overlapping and sometimes indistinguishable flows of time in the memories of those who are simultaneously daughter, mother, and woman. Cruz retraces, through articles of clothing left by elder family members, both the course of family history and her own personal experience, and through these exquisite and poetic works, she newly encounters her mother, aunt, and grandmother.
The special relationship between mother and daughter grows from more than a sense of shared gender. Mother and daughter project on each other their sense of the eras they inhabit, the growth and decline of the family, and their own personal experience of growth. As their lives intersect and interact in this relationship, the daughter becomes for the mother a kind of newly-born self, a reincarnation or re-embodiment through which she can re-experience her own childhood, and the daughter is subconsciously influenced, emulating her mother or internalizing her identification with her until one day she becomes a mother herself. In First Cast: Mother, Cruz takes a little girl’s dress as the point of connection, symbolizing the special intersection of mothers’ and daughters’ lives. The work embodies the transformations between mother, daughter, and woman, the reflection of the other’s life in oneself, and the sometimes contradictory weave of love and conflict between them.
The Warmth of Woven Garments These items of clothing, collected and kept for so long, are hand-sewn children’s garments originally made specially by Cruz’s maternal grandmother for her mother and maternal aunt. As the years went by and those
1 Iris Marion Young. On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays. (New York: Oxford University, 2005), p.128.
2 Jean Baudrillard. The System of Objects ( Le Système des Objets ). Trans. James Benedict. (New York: Verso. 1996(1968)). p.91.
57
children grew into adults, the clothes were not discarded, but were kept in the family’s chests and wardrobes. The artist once again spreads out these garments, wrinkled by long storage, portraying their textures and decorative patterns in her fine brushwork and elegant lines. Her detailed, unhurried presentation gives glimpses of a mother’s state of mind, in the way she will dote on her children and maintain a sentimental attachment to such items even after they are grown.
Interpreting the meanings connected with clothing often involves exploring social and cultural signs and symbols, for which there is an established context and history; implicit in clothing are the customs and manners of a particular region, and their associations with class, gender, and historical era. The woven fabrics of our clothing become a symbol or a metaphor for the body itself. If our first skin is indicative of our race and our bloodline, then our second skin, our clothing, has a greater function than simply fending off wind and rain: this second skin encases the warmth of our bodies, reflects the lines of our movements, and carries the memory of different experiences. For that reason, in these paintings of children’s garments hand-sewn by Cruz’s grandmother, the visual interest lies not so much in their different patterns or styles, but in their ability to imply or to reveal moments of actual life, forming a chain of memory between three generations of women in the family and a point of intersection in their genealogy.
In the details of these paintings, we see the grandmother’s clever choices of pattern and color, the way she carefully cut the garments, picking matching colors for cuffs and buttons, and her fine stitching and pressure creases—details that, so carefully depicted by the artist, display the love that flows from a mother’s heart. In other ways, these clothes project a sense of time’s passage: mended patches that themselves are now worn, threads peeling away from the seams, mold spots from being folded and boxed, stains that wouldn’t wash out, and signs of fading. Like the growth rings in trees, these details accrete with the passing seasons and become traces that record life’s experiences.
The Paths of Memory The past circumstances of our memories intrude into the spaces of our real lives, and past events, passing through space and time, evoke a range of responses in viewers. On the relationship between looking and memory, John Berger said, “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.”3 Cruz’s work depicts the styles and patterns of these garments, the color and sheen of their fabrics, hinting at the various materials used and the changing temperatures of the seasons in which they would be worn. Their fine, spreading folds and seams wind across the picture space like rivers and mountain chains, rising and falling, crossing different plains under different seasons, evoking sensations once felt by the viewers themselves. The dress in Cruz’s Bright but Broken Petals, adorned with flowers in various pastel shades above a ground of light blue, contrasts with the warm, spring-like, breezy feel of the garment in Sunny Dress for Sunny Weather, with its wildly spreading blooms. Appealing motifs of bicycles, tricycles, and animals spread across the
3 John Berger. Ways of Seeing. (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972), p.9.
58
dress in Checkered Moment with Mended Patches, full of bright color and the liveliness of childhood. Checkered moment forms a multi-layered, intertextual narrative, as childhood memories and images begin to surface, and the string of moments from Cruz’s life journey presented in the exhibition space mingles with viewers’ own life experiences.
As Cruz presents the details of these fabrics, retracing her own past, she simultaneously provides viewers a unique path for the discovery of memories: we’ve all had a piece of clothing such as this. Maybe a grey-brown, long-sleeved item that we’d slip on, morning and evening, when the autumn winds started to blow; or else it was that little olive-green jacket that we were scolded into wearing when winter came. Or maybe it was that little dress we loved, that we wore until it was faded and worn to threads, the one that even then we still couldn’t bear to give up. From the stains that countless washings couldn’t remove, we dimly recall how we accidently got that spot of sauce, or how we carelessly sloshed that fruit juice onto our clothes—as well as the extra inches that were left for us to grow into, and how the clothes would be mended again after they finally fit us. We are reminded, too, by the signs of friction around the repeated mends that our families may not have been the most well off, as our mothers ran a thrifty household, lovingly tending to these matters.
It’s as if we can see our mother’s gestures and rhythms as she folds, compresses, then gathers up and bundles these clothes again and again, season after season, year after year. Even if those seasons of our lives will never return, we can, in our memories, return to them again and again.
Defamiliarizing the Familiar This exhibition of Marina Cruz’s work at the Mind Set Art Center includes ten oil works depicting the fabrics of garments. Cruz deliberately enlarges their scale, her compositions focusing on partial views such that, rather than the entire cut of the garment, we see instead a series of intense close-ups. Her realist painting techniques present fabric patterns with startling clarity and magnified detail, producing something like the visual flatness of fabric specimens or compressed planar views. As our eyes take in typically overlooked details, these daily items no longer seem like routine parts of daily life; familiar articles and materials instead become symbols or metaphors. Our gaze escapes from the space of the painting and we enter a stream of consciousness, as these finely detailed folds and wrinkles present something different from our usual experience of such images: these are not images of soft, fluffy new clothes.
Through defamiliarization, the artist draws the viewer away from the familiar daily context of such items. The garments become a series of overlapping symbols, strangely paradoxical in their simultaneous nearness and distance from us. In Cruz’s Personal Archive I and II and her Pink Crib and Pink Cabinets, the household spaces of her memory seem frozen in time. Clothing folded for storage becomes part of the furniture, and childhood homewear takes on a different inflection: transformed into an abstract idea rather than scenes from past memories, we associate our own experience with what we see in Cruz’s work, which returns us again to actual scenes of home life. These layers upon layers of clothing, miscellaneous items, and furniture rearrange themselves into new
59
layers of memory. As we gaze at them and reflect, two separate streams of memory, temporo-spatial memory and physical, bodily memory, internal and external, weave together and pass through us.
The aesthetic concept of “defamiliarization” was first put forward in the early 20th century by Russian scholar Victor Shklovsky. Initially meaning to “make something strange,” it emphasized the ways that beauty may result when we remove ourselves to an appropriate distance from overly familiar sensations and perceptions. If “familiar” means our most intimate sensory experiences, then “unfamiliar” means the alienation that follows familiarity. “Defamiliarization” does not mean non-perceptual or non-conscious, but rather is the means by which the artist produces new insights and associations: taking advantage of the gap between the familiar and the unfamiliar, or even through deliberately abnormal states, she seeks to enhance the viewer’s insight and experience by stimulating the sense of visual beauty so often dulled by our daily lives. If the period of time in which we move between the two points of familiar and unfamiliar is lengthened, it produces a kind of tension, a tension which is not just an aesthetic viewpoint but is, in its own way, a state of being.
Viewing the childhood garments presented here will certainly spark curiosity about the stories behind these exquisitely portrayed garments, marked everywhere with time’s passage, and how they were once worn. We can almost hear our mother (or one of our grandmothers) humming a children’s tune, or that story that was repeated over and over, or something about the daydreams we once had as a child. In the movement between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the artist’s look at the past mingles with the viewer’s memories; by presenting familiar objects in an unfamiliar way, the artist creates unreality out of memory (which was once reality), then re-injects it back into our present reality.
Life as a child isn’t always full of laughter, yet when all we have left is our ability to reminisce, and to evoke the past through art, it comes to seem like an irreplaceable period of good times. A bright, colorful, and beautiful time in our lives.
Gazing at these works evokes memories, and love. Enlarging these garments’ details helps to slow the rhythms of our remembering, and in a kind of freeze-frame visual language, we meet not just the images and their accompanying aura, but an encapsulation of the circumstances surrounding them. If, as suggested by the theories of philosopher Henri Bergson, time is indivisible, and each moment is unique, then what exactly is “remembered time”? As we focus our gaze and meditate, thoughts and impressions stimulated by our senses emerge and coalesce, ultimately capturing for us the transient memory of a single moment. Remembering, then, calls on memory to evoke and reproduce a time that once elapsed in a particular space, and the experiences and feelings we underwent during that past time. Memory cannot reproduce the past, but through art such as this, we can gaze at the past, as it gazes back at us; we can regenerate it and coexist with it—with these memories that have been folded and folded again, and then, once more, spread open in front of us.
60