March 18th, 2025
María Ibáñez Lago
We visited French-Argentine artist María Ibáñez Lago at POUSH Studios in Aubervilliers,
on the outskirts of Paris, on March 18th, 2025
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In a general perspective that aims to move away from anthropocentrism, her in situ installations explore the themes of energy contained in natural things and propose formal systems in connection with the architecture and landscape that houses them. Her proposals include the notion of model and decoration in the artistic installation. Interested in the geometry that starts from the plant and ends in the volume, she developed a project of prototyping new or endangered plant species, which is expressed in the form of models, drawings, installations, creating plant architectures that develop in unconventional spaces.
She is interested in the supports of the image, and its narrative character, in its potential to evoke a dramaturgy, a silent fiction, a story to be recomposed. The elements of the scenographic tradition often serve as a device for her. She refers to painting through its history, moving the cursor of the format outside the limits that define it, until its transformation into volume. All of her recent sculptures start from the plane, from the surface of the canvas, to gain space through a geometry of curved edges.
The concept of energy is taken in its material aspect and its economic uses, linked to feminism, but also in its mystical and corporal meaning, in a superposition of concepts and representations. The misuse of this energy, linked to the exploitation of natural resources and its economic model, is reflected in her conception of the landscape genre. Its role in climate change is denounced and the works acquire political meaning.
The plant world is seen as a reservoir of energy, linked to food, the alchemy of photosynthesis and its healing powers. Plants are contemplated through the nostalgic filter of their disappearance due to climate change and used as an element in the construction of memory. They are also the testing ground for the reconstruction of a possible world. Animism and anthropomorphism are tools to bring them closer to humans.
The plant is taken as a representative of the “voiceless”, of those who are at the base of all existence but who are not heard. The disappearance of species and the use of plants as an industrial resource are denounced. A parallel is established between “botanical blindness” and female invisibility.
María Ibáñez Lago imagines a vision of the near future from fragmentation, recompositing of remains of the present.
María is now preparing an exhibition at the Jardins Suspendus in Le Havre, bringing together several projects, including entirely new works. During this visit, we will have the opportunity to see her work in progress and discuss the development of the exhibition.
https://mariaibanezlago.com/
Born in Buenos Aires in 1960, María Ibáñez Lago is a French-Argentine artist and set designer. She lived alternately between Buenos Aires and Paris for periods of 15 years. She studied Scenography and Painting at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in the Zao-Woo-ki workshop. In Buenos Aires she attended Diana Aisenberg's clinics.
She is interested in the different contexts of artistic production, as well as in the different possibilities of defining being an artist. Having gone through the 2001 crisis in Argentina and the resources of collective resilience that emerged among the artistic community, marked her commitment to self-managed artist collectives.
She has been interested since her beginnings in various artist collectives, for the production of joint projects. In France, she is co-founder of the Artist-run Space Julio, which focuses on the link between Latin American artists and the French artistic context, and is also the curator of many of the exhibitions produced in her space in the 20th district of Paris. She collaborates as such with Carrée sur Seine, Dos Mares, Salon de Montrouge, Biennale de l’Image Tangible, among other events.
In Argentina, she was part of the collective PintorAs, established artists who work on gender politics and definitions of painting. On this subject, she coordinated the Feminist School of Painting of the Olivier Debré Centre for Contemporary Creation (Tours) within the framework of the presentation of the work of Ad Minoliti.
She recently exhibited her installations at the Grand Palais, Paris, invited by Poush, an artist incubator to which she has belonged for several years. In the field of installations in unconventional places that allow her to experience particular relationships with space, she was the winner of the 2023 “Jardins du monde en mouvement” competition, for an in-situ installation at the Parc de la Cité Internationale. She is currently working on an exhibition within the framework of the Jardins Suspendus in the city of Le Havre, presenting in 2022 an in-situ installation at the K.A.B in the greenhouse on the Place des Batignolles and in 2021 an installation in the chapel of the Château de Lacaze (Lot et Garonne).
Her recent exhibitions are “Sensorama” at the Cultural Centre of the Ville de Gentilly, “Extractivistas” at the Latin American art space Artivistas, “Radicar” curated by Margaux Knight at the Rift space. In Buenos Aires, she participates in the Las Visitas cycle at the Ruth Benzacar Gallery invited by Chiaccio & Giannone. Invited by the Mira fair of Latin American art at the Maison de l’Amérique Latine, she has participated in the Ddessin salon and many other collective exhibitions.
María now Lives and works in France, Aubervilliers.