Incubate (2021)
Porcelain hand built series of three.




Incubate1. Porcelain on rotating metal plate. 17,5 x 18 x 14 cm
Incubate 2. Porcelain on rotating metal plate.14 x 22,5 x 16 cm
Incubate 3. Porcelain on rotating metal plate. 8 x 22 x 16,5 cm
The coil of many births: (auto-bestiary)
One sculpture conjures to mind an adult human female form trapped in the bloblike mass of a placenta, much as a calf just emerged from a mother-cow still wears the lining, the slime of its mother, of the feminine which appals and fascinates, terrifies and comforts by way of the life-giving magical potency. The bodies, and limbs struggling to escape a translucent, flowing wall– part nocturnal fairy-mist, part placental– recalls a line from a famous Andean folklore verse “El gusano escapa su prisión de seda” “The worm escapes its prison of silk” While admiring the metamorphosis of the butterfly in affectionate terms, we often forget what the pre-Columbian culture knew without having the microscope: that the metamorphosis, within the chrysalis involves violent and dramatic forces, as acids melt down and destroy the body of a caterpillar before its recomposition. Melo’s method of coiling, at least partly derived from the traditional ceramics of the North of Chile, is an original and important insertion into contemporary plastic arts. With her “coiling” method, the sculpting begins at the base, a patient activity snaking upwards, in which the artist’s manual-mental effort raises the sculpture, a germination – rather different than the more common methods in Europe, which, described loosely, more resembling an attack on the formless blob, unwilling to accept that materials such as marble (geologically defined as metamorphic rock) are not static. Melo explains how her “coiling” harks back to a pre-Columbian Pan-American world view and genesis-story, in which the circle was the beginning metaphor understanding the world. Coiling represents a peace-making action in how it guides the creative energy, and the underlying way of thinking differs from the Western logic of the dialectical and oppositional forces as inherent to all progress or motion. In this sense, the coiling method underlies a calm in which intensity may bloom. Abstract of Review text by Arturo Desimone. Arubian - Argentinian writer and visual artist. Buenos Aires 2021.
Extract review exhibition text for Su Melo Written by Arturo Desimone, Arubian-Argentinian writer and visual artist.
Buenos Aires 2021. Open the full document.