Marta Diez
By Celia Aiziczon de Franco
Marta Díez’s masks begin by making their way into her inner self, causing her to search for her own language, nurtured by the cultures of America, especially those from the Northern area of Argentina.
Marta set off on the hero´s journey when she left Tucumán: she travelled all over the world, went through the tests and returned to her native place, enriched and extending an invitation for us to see this display of great symbolic content, causing us to think of and review man´s situation in the world. It is not possible to live without masks, “man cannot be conceived of without a mask, any human action entails a mask”, a mask concealing and at the same time revealing, causing an impact and a transformation, depriving each one of us of our various masks. A mask is another face, a way of connecting to the world, the way of being in the world.
In a poem entitled “In order to live”, I have written:
“In order to live it is necessary
to invent ourselves anew each morning,
invent our body so that it will resist the pain
of the whole day,
invent a face for ourselves
daring to look at itself in the mirror...”
It is in this sense that Marta tries to show, through her masks, the double game of revealing and hiding, where the mirror plays an important role inasmuch as it is the reflection of what we are and intend to be.
Borges has expressed this in his poem “Mirrors”,
Metal mirrors behind masks,
wooden mirror diffusing,
in the fog of its red dawn,
that face which is looking and being looked at.
I see them, infinite, elementary
performers of an age-old pact,
multiplying the world as the generating act,
sleepless and fatal...
The mirror is needed to visually check the effect caused by the mask. It is necessary to pass the test of the looking-glass reflecting the infinite faces we “put on” throughout our life. Thus the first reorganization of one´s own image sets off from this, both with masks and make-up, the latter being one more way of masking. Marta is interested in recreating images of the masks from the Chiriguano-Chané culture, especially the aña-hanti, belonging to the ceremony known as “Gran Areté”, in which the mask becomes the means to guaranteeing “the renewal of vital energy”.
Marta Díez continues working on masks, which have attained the level of works-of-art expressing her mastery of the technique, her dexterity and originality which make it possible for her to display an entire collection of works having great visual impact and recreating the language of Indian cultures of the North-West of Argentina.
Marta´s sensitivity is manifested fully in each of her pieces, where the solid shapes of her art become a defense against time, against no longer being oneself; she is always capable of following a new path, showing that paths are infinite as is man himself, her mastery of techniques and quality making itself evident in the collection opening today: a collection full of suggestion, where the artist - by the sheer magic of creation, by showing and not showing, concealing and displaying – attains wide support to this peculiar way of producing within the domain of that which is esthetic.
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Celia Aiziczon de Franco. Member of the Asociation Internacional de Criticos de Arte (International Association of Art Critics)