Karina Mago
residency location | saint petersburg, us
AIR November 3-9, 2020
AIR November 3-9, 2020
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Karina Mago is a Venezuelan artist, raised in Caracas, then transplanted to South Florida. She received her BFA from Florida State University, with concentrations in Ceramics, Paint, and Printmaking. Her current body of work emerges from an ongoing collection of memory landscapes, translated from lived experiences, that seek to capture the affect of time, feelings of displacement from the known to the unknown, and the semi-sweet bitterness of relinquishing home. Symbols of late stage capitalism, the scaffolding of partly constructed buildings, light flickering through fences, cables weaved together on a powerline, ladders leading to more ladders, are welcomed subjects for the work, and become protagonists within a harrowed narrative expressed through installation and sculpture. Her travels have taken her across the continental US, becoming an Artist in Residence at Goggleworks Center for the Arts and the Mendocino Art Center, and most recently, at the Morean Center for Clay.
As Venezolanos, my family, myself, and millions more were forced on a journey through flames. We emigrate or face an exponentially decaying government. We drastically change our lives to make ends meet. We learn to accept leaving loved ones behind while trying to keep in touch. Slowly, we become more accustomed to living an estranged life separated by a turbulent sea of more-than-water. As the new normal settles, the wake of that uncertainty leaves a foaming trail that coats every thought, interaction, and moment with a film of unsettling anxiety, irreversibly changing a person. I take seriously these experiences and reflect upon them to better study identity— both gained and lost— under conditions of intensifying precarity.
My work consists of ubiquitous memory/landscape collections, harnessed through lived experiences, and translates those elements out of my personal space into a shared reality. The resulting compositions become an assemblage of displaced memories and daily impressions to be seen and surrounded by, to be submerged within. These newfound landscapes, moments of stilled motion, attempt to freeze time in its most current cacophonous arrangement. This relative quiet creates a breadth that allows me to examine everyday chaos at a more palatable distance.
My practice is an exercise in personal introspection mediated by the demands of clay. The clay allows for emotions to be held deep within the seams, but it does not tolerate any insecurity with the hand. It reacts lively to a gentle touch or a firm grip. Once fired, clay undergoes the ultimate change, becoming a completely different material that reflects the atmospheric whim it has been subjected to. The pieces from these atmospheric firings emerge as calculated moments of contained chance, the surface becoming permanently marked by the path of a flame, and the objects transforming into reminders of an arduous journey.
︎Karina‘s IG