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 the book finds continuity within an \;artistic inquiry deeply connected to mem ory\, identity\, and a sense of belonging. Personal \;experience\, fam ily history\, and ties to places of origin are permeated by questions abou t \;what remains when spaces change and how we reconstruct our identit ies through \;remembrance. Text and image coexist with traces\, fragme nts\, and superimpositions that \;seem to operate much like memory its elf: never entirely linear\, never entirely stable. \;Throughout her p ractice\, references to places of origin\, the women in her family\, and t he \;narratives that shape our perception of ourselves have constructe d a cartography in which \;the personal intersects with more universal questions of origin\, absence\, permanence\, and \;transformation.
\nHer background and experience in psychology\, together with her inte rest in archetypes \;and spirituality\, add another dimension to these explorations. Within her books\, the \;physical space of the page can also be understood as an interior space: a territory where \;images\, words\, and signs make visible what belongs to subjective experience. Mat eriality \;thus acquires a symbolic dimension. Accumulating\, stitchin g\, layering\, transferring an \;image\, or interrupting a surface bec ome actions through which to speak about what is \;remembered\, what d isappears\, and what\, even after being transformed\, continues to \;r emain part of us.
\nThe exhibition thus invites us to reconsider wha
t it means to open a book. Alongside the volumes that naturally inhabit th
e library and await interpretation through words\, Valiente&rsquo\;s books
propose another kind of reading. They\, too\, contain knowledge\, but a&n
bsp\;form of knowledge that cannot necessarily be translated into a defini
tion or a phrase. It \;emerges from the relationship between thought a
nd matter\, memory and image\, the
artist&rsquo\;s intimate experienc
e and the experience of the viewer.
To move outside the confines o
f the rectangle means\, in this sense\, much more than \;abandoning th
e conventional boundaries of an artistic surface. It means expanding the&n
bsp\;possibilities of the book and\, with them\, the ways in which we cons
truct knowledge. The book ceases to be solely something we read and become
s something we navigate\, question\, and experience: an object capable of
containing not only stories\, but memory\,
presence\, and the most di
verse ways of understanding and recognizing ourselves.