Presentation by Ester de Izaguirre at Villa Ocampo, Mar del Plata.

By Ester de Izaguirre

What could I say, after what we have just been listening to, and after having read this beautiful book written by Rubén Vela on art as produced by Marta Díez.
During my travelling over the world, even if I may have forgotten most, there are things that remain untouched in my memory, among which are art exhibitions. Very few of them have been devoted to masks – indeed, this is not a failure in my memory – yet there is not a single one that can compare with Marta´s.
I visited Marta Díez´s studio, where mystery made itself felt. While watching a picture, we view it as a whole. So do we when watching a statue. But in the case of a mask made by an artist like Marta, there is more in it than work of art. Let me take, for instance, “La Pietà”. I may describe everything I see in it, I may pay attention to the impressionism related to the time when it was made, or compare it. But in the case of masks, I had never before thought about the art in them, yet a mask made by an artist may be disquieting.
Here, the masks are - let us say - isolated, but at Marta´s Studio seeing them all is truly moving, they stir us by what we see, by what we do not see and cannot even tell, because sight is - I believe - among our most precious abilities. Those blind eyes in fact see, which is disquieting.
This is masterly shown by Rubén Vela´s poetry: he is a good observer and a good critic expressing precisely what I might say myself. Yet there is a lot that remains inside of me with reference to the masks that I cannot describe.
In the poems of my own production that I am going to read out to you, each time a “mask” is mentioned, it does not of course mean the same as watching the art in Martha´s masks. Here are a few poems, dated I do not remember when.
“I know what it conceals.
No one even suspects that
It is in fact looking at the
Border of an unexplored country
Which cannot be found in tour guides, nor in maps.
There it is, ready to deceive through its burnt cardboard.
There is one for each occasion,
For each loathsome quarrel.
The mask of time, made of brevity and forgetfulness.
The mask of love is there too - the only one that can conceal the epiphany of gesture.
And then the last one, standing still, tenacious and perverted,
The one imitating a real face.
But time will later on
also contribute with ashes.
Signs.
Someone utters his impure praise
Among all the shadowy masks.
Something is trailing along the shocked earth
And something is dying in the September air.
I have not wept over you.
In memory of Clelia Costa Lima, my friend
In your steady face I watched all the masks
That will perhaps stop with me.
I have not wept over you, my friend
Because I want to reach through silence
The depth of your not being here.
I want someone to help me chat over your absence
About cafés, bookshops, music and poems
Where there is something mermaid-like to help me
through this morning without your good-day wish.
I am beginning to dislike solving crossword puzzles that caress habits.
Buenos Aires is looking at a torn flag.
Here is a toast to the verdict of the days
That made me come across you that afternoon,
A toast to your face – which is the face of the future and the face of remembrance,
Of everything that one has dreamed of all through life,
Of everything that we have lost before having owned it.
A toast to illusion and misunderstanding,
To the absurdity that makes a man more mannish,
To the impossibility that causes life to be more lively,
To the star that we consider our own
Just because we can look at it every night
Even if it may not exist, having burned out through entreatment.
A toast to your masks, to mine,
To time - that it may fail as regards your image,
To our holding hands one of these days
While being surprised by a miracle.
To my dear Marta, who made such an impression on me the day I visited her atelier.
“Anyone standing before Marta Díez´s masks may reach the critical height of poet Rubén Vela, who wrote, `Masks are among the earliest representations of the religious adventure of mankind.´
The word mask has several meanings: mockery; disguise covering the face so as to remain unknown; excuse, concealment, veil, simulation. This reminds me of the beginnings of Grecian theatre, in which the true star was the mask – of course after the megaphone amplifying voices and all the other resources through which Oedipus Rex et al were represented in the ancient world.
As from the VI century B.C., Greek actors wore masks. Masks were a soul, an added, indifferent identity, showing two sides of a person.
Masks are worn so as to disclose the two sides of a person. Through them the view and the voice of the other person come out.
What about mask itself? Without the service from the actor – a man – I would never have thought about independence in the definition of a mask, not until I read this work by Rubén Vela and watched Marta Díez´s creations at her atelier. I had never imagined the function, beauty, and expressivity of a mask when it is a work of art – as it is in the case of Marta Díez´s. Upon watching her works and the beauty and mystery of a face without eyes, upon realizing that the gaze had been changed into mystery, I could value the art of that which cannot be understood, that which has no explanation, an enigma that cannot be expressed in the way that any mask fitting a face does.
It is a mystery that may only be glimpsed through art, beauty, shape and colour.
What is concealed behind those empty eye-sockets?
A realm of beauty.
There is no lack of eyes -
They face lower realities watching us;
They are there, yet we fail to see them beause reality sets a limit:
Here, viewers;
Over there, the entire mystery of beauty.
Visiting Marta Díez´s atelier will not stir in us a mood similar to that of visiting an exhibition of paintings or sculptures, nor a mood similar to that of listening to Mozart´s music. It is the disquieting beauty of the mystery of miracle through symbols and feelings that are inexpressible. Hers are masks and sculptures pointing out to art as it was by the time when early mankind, through its inner nature and its own human nature, first grasped the early mysterious shapes for appealing to the gods.
I wonder whether her showing traits and colours is meant to reach the whole of an image. In each of her works there is a synthesis of beauty, each one is a great landscape of nature, meaning human nature. This is depicted in the human landscape by the mystery of mankind. It is so much of a mystery that each human being can see the enigma in the other one beyond incredible concealment. In the eyes of all men we may detect sadness, gladness, triumph and defeat, each of the infinite feelings, as we do in Marta Díez´s masks, the eyes of which are abyss signs of naught and everything. A shudder in the night of soul, a labyrinth with no way out, a door closed so as to show the beauty of mystery. A mask cannot look at us, but its blindness will guess us.