Celestial Brizuela

Sala:GAM presents Desterrados volveremos al néctar, Celestial Brizuela's first exhibition at the gallery, curated by Chavis Mármol.

The title of this first solo exhibition by Argentine artist Celestial Brizuela was taken from a fragment of a poem by Marta Kelly, her mother. This is how the exhibition begins: with a visceral and intimate charge that connects both with family affections and with the emotional temperament of Argentine folklore. This force is materialized in a diversity of pieces generous in media and techniques, ranging from miniature sculptural fables and sordid landscapes in painting to animated floral choreographies frame by frame. All this under a very particular aesthetic that Celestial has been refining with perseverance and experimentation: a tenebrist filter that can only be achieved by working on every detail with a deeply artisanal meticulousness.

The artistic richness of the exhibition stems from the obsession and rigor with which the artist devotes herself to her work, endowing it with forms, techniques, and themes that reveal a deep fascination with natural elements, which function as support, canvas, atmosphere, and language in each of her pieces. If for the traditional painter, canvas and oil are the surface on which the image is manifested, Celestial replaces the frame with branches, stones, leaves, moss, and fungi: organic matter that she recomposes and transforms to give shape to imaginary landscapes that serve as the setting for short stories, starring insects and tiny human figures represented on the same scale, which places both species on the same hierarchical level, thus challenging the traditional anthropocentric view.

Beneath the surface of these natural scenes lie sculptural models that reveal a genuine concern for the human condition, uprooting, desires, fears, and anxieties. Migration appears here not only as physical displacement, but as a vital impulse shared by many species: the result of curiosity, necessity, and the desire to survive. In a present marked by Manichean narratives, the phenomenon of migration has been instrumentalized to sow fear, point fingers, and dehumanize entire communities. Contrary to this rhetoric, the migrant's gaze in Celestial's work embodies a constant struggle: the hope for a better life.

From forms of representation charged with subtle nostalgia, we discover extraordinary, antagonistic, non-canonical characters: oddballs, like herself; flowers that have their own language, which we access through a series of animated projections that trigger memories, invented memories, visual micro-stories, and poems. A unique, delightful exhibition, the product of a brutal combination of genius and constant work.

Once upon a time, there was a flower that bloomed out of season.

It found no field to welcome it, so it took root in the crack of a stone. Insects passed by and murmured:

“A flower that does not know its place does not bloom.” But it bloomed anyway.

A bumblebee, which also had no fixed home, found in that flower its only rest. Every day it flew far away in search of nectar, and every night it returned.

A bumblebee, which also had no fixed home, found its only rest in that flower. Every day it flew far away to search for nectar, and every night it returned.

“You don't give much,” a beetle said to the flower, “but your shade feels like home.” And then, more arrived. Little by little, the rock became a garden.

Thank you, Celestial, for sharing your world with us.

–Galería de Arte Mexicano