Beyond the rectangle: an artist book as ve
ssels
Marilyn Valiente
Curated by: Shirley Moreira
For c enturies\, the book has been one of our primary spaces for preserving\, or ganizing\, and transmitting knowledge. Its pages construct sequences\, con nect ideas\, and allow experiences\, memories\, and thoughts to travel acr oss time and reach the reader. The \;artist&rsquo\;s book emerges from this same communicative capacity while altering its codes: it no longer m erely contains a work or a discourse but becomes the work itself. The page \;ceases to function solely as a support for text\; image\, material\ , texture\, gesture\, emptiness\, \;folds\, and the very structure of the book all participate in the construction of meaning. \;Reading\, t hen\, also becomes an act of looking\, touching\, navigating\, and discove ring. \;Beyond the rectangle: an artist book as vessels\, an exhibitio n by artist Marilyn Valiente\, \;is situated precisely within this ter ritory of displacement. Presented in the context of the \;Main Library \, the exhibition establishes a dialogue between two ways of understanding \;the book: one we recognize as a repository and transmitter of knowl edge\, and another \;that\, through the visual arts\, expands this fun ction into a perceptual and conceptual \;experience. The artist&rsquo\ ;s book retains something essential to the act of reading\, the \;inti macy\, the discovery\, the progression from one fragment to another\, whil e disrupting \;the expectation of an exclusively verbal and linear rea ding. Each object establishes its \;own rules\, transforming the viewe r into a reader of images\, materials\, symbols\, and \;associations.< /p>\n
In Marilyn Valiente&rsquo\;s practice\, this expansion of th
e book finds continuity within an \;artistic inquiry deeply connected
to memory\, identity\, and a sense of belonging. Personal \;experience
\, family history\, and ties to places of origin are permeated by question
s about \;what remains when spaces change and how we reconstruct our i
dentities through \;remembrance. Text and image coexist with traces\,
fragments\, and superimpositions that \;seem to operate much like memo
ry itself: never entirely linear\, never entirely stable. \;Throughout
her practice\, references to places of origin\, the women in her family\,
and the \;narratives that shape our perception of ourselves have cons
tructed a cartography in which \;the personal intersects with more uni
versal questions of origin\, absence\, permanence\, and \;transformati
on.
Her background and experience in psychology\, together w
ith her interest in archetypes \;and spirituality\, add another dimens
ion to these explorations. Within her books\, the \;physical space of
the page can also be understood as an interior space: a territory where&nb
sp\;images\, words\, and signs make visible what belongs to subjective exp
erience. Materiality \;thus acquires a symbolic dimension. Accumulatin
g\, stitching\, layering\, transferring an \;image\, or interrupting a
surface become actions through which to speak about what is \;remembe
red\, what disappears\, and what\, even after being transformed\, continue
s to \;remain part of us.
The exhibition thus invites us to re
consider what it means to open a book. Alongside the volumes that naturall
y inhabit the library and await interpretation through words\, Valiente&rs
quo\;s books propose another kind of reading. They\, too\, contain knowled
ge\, but a \;form of knowledge that cannot necessarily be translated i
nto a definition or a phrase. It \;emerges from the relationship betwe
en thought and matter\, memory and image\, the
artist&rsquo\;s intima
te experience and the experience of the viewer.
To move outside th
e confines of the rectangle means\, in this sense\, much more than \;a
bandoning the conventional boundaries of an artistic surface. It means exp
anding the \;possibilities of the book and\, with them\, the ways in w
hich we construct knowledge. The book ceases to be solely something we rea
d and becomes something we navigate\, question\, and experience: an object
capable of containing not only stories\, but memory\,
presence\, and
the most diverse ways of understanding and recognizing ourselves.