Perla Mata Chairez

Lagos invites you to Perla Mata Chairez's Open Studio from 3 to 7pm.

Perla Mata Chairez's latest work invites us to reconsider painting from the perspective of its materiality; she paints with post-industrial waste.

For years, Perla has been reflecting on and creating pieces that respond to the presence and damage caused by the “black hill”—a mound of waste from silver mining—in La Laguna, Coahuila, her native land.

In the 1990s, there were many cases of people in Torreón and the rest of La Laguna whose health was affected by heavy metals. In response, the mining industry made adjustments so that lead would no longer be present in the open-pit mine, which is a landmark in the city's landscape, as it is over 30 meters high.

The black material that makes up the hill is contained by a fence around its perimeter, but not in its volume. Therefore, given the characteristic dust storms of La Laguna, it spreads throughout the region: it is a black dust that is released and lives in streets, houses, clothes, parks, and is breathed by the inhabitants of the region.

This phenomenon of the “black hill” captivates Perla's consciousness and sensitivity, both because of its color, its presence as a landmark in the environment, its effect on the body, and its mobility due to its radical release by the wind.

At her residence in Lagos, Perla has developed another format to express the black dust in her paintings: performance art. She is captivated by the mobility of the material, both as it spreads throughout the region and in its “liveliness” when used as a pigment in the paintings she has made over the last year. The moistened dust floats at times in the liquid and, when spread on the canvas, moves according to its nature; Perla's hand can hardly manipulate it. From this experience, and seeking fidelity, resonance, and knowledge situated with the material principle, Perla formulates an action that involves painted canvases and the body. Like a sinister dance, she seeks and finds the light of symbolic charge and amplifies her painting into action.

–olgaMargarita dávila