Artist Maria A. Guzman Capron is a textile artist. Sarasota Art Museum curator Lacie Barbour says that it’s a discipline that’s on the rebound.
“It’s a medium that has not always been celebrated in art history and in institutions. Due to the domesticity and the femininity associated with it as an artistic practice it has been sort of marginalized in the greater art historical canon. In the past few decades there has been a renaissance of fiber and textile art, which Sarasota Art Museum proudly pushes forward. And so it’s important to showcase textiles in a contemporary art museum and celebrate them.”
Capron’s solo show at Sarasota Art Museum is titled “Penumbra.”
“The kind of gray area where it's not fully light, it's not fully dark, is called the penumbra,” observed Barbour. “This is a sort of liminal space in between light and dark that really disrupts our binary way of thinking.”
It’s a metaphor for the multiplicity of identities we have depending on context.
“The first work you see whenever you come out of the elevator and step into the exhibition is titled ‘Espejo,’” said Barbour. “The title translates to mirror… There are four faces looking in different directions and they are sort of disembodied in a way. Their limbs are multiplied. They start merging into one another, reaching for each other, giving each other this gesture of care by caressing each other's faces. The four faces and the merging of these bodies really represent the inherent multiplicity within us.”
Of the 10 pieces in the exhibition, nine are traditional flat wall hangings.
“Anchoring the exhibition right in the center of the gallery is this suspended 15-foot sculpture made entirely out of textiles and quilted fabrics,” Barbour noted.
Dragon-like, it’s name is “Sombra.” It signifies the shadow we all share and through which we are interconnected.
“Penumbra” is on view at the Sarasota Art Museum through Sept. 27.
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In “Penumbra,” Maria A. Guzmán Capron explores the complexities of identity through vibrant figurative textiles. Born in Milan to Peruvian and Colombian parents and later relocating to Texas as a teenager, the California-based artist understands first-hand the challenges of toggling between different cultures, languages and geographies.
Capron channels these personal experiences into her artwork, creating layered portraits of exuberant, multi-faceted otherworldly figures that exist in a realm of possibility and express the duality within us all. Through her use of hand-dyed, painted, and screen-printed fabrics, Capron asks viewers to consider the way our own identities have been stitched together over time — beautiful, ever-evolving collages of ancestry, culture, and life experiences.
Capron’s process mirrors the construction of identity
“Early in her practice, she would thrift and use recycled mass-produced fabrics,” noted Barbour. “Stitching all those fragments together into one piece mirrored this idea constructing one's identity and all of the different parts of ourselves that we reveal to other people in certain situations. So the collection of different fabrics early on in the process mirrored the construction of the self.”
In her search, Capron found that she was drawn to certain colors and patterns that reminded her of Peruvian textiles she had in her home, the clothing her grandmother would wear, and markets she visited in Colombia.
“So she was simultaneously collecting these associations with memory and expressing them through the different fabrics that she would find,” Barbour added.
As her practice has developed, Capron began creating her own original textile designs.
“That has enabled her to have more control over the aesthetic and the narrative quality of her works,” Barbour pointed out. “She is hand-dyeing white cotton using very vibrant colors, then she adds screen-printed drawings on top of them, which she also hand paints. The result is this really wonderful, really vibrant array of all these different fabrics, building up narratives and figures, different otherworldly characters that represent so many larger themes that are both personal to her and also universal.”
Whether the fabric is found or new, the evolution is consistent.
“While she is constructing her figures from all of these various pieces, she's building something new,” Barbour observed. “So, in the sense that her identity is a new thing, she's an amalgamation of all of these things which becomes a new being or entity. And then as far as the different motifs, and how that is kind of based on her upbringing, she makes these figures that are somewhere between figuration and abstraction.”
Abstract anthropomorphism
Capron’s newest works depict hybrid otherworldly, fantastical characters which vacillate between human and non-human configurations.
“They're very amorphous and very ambiguous,” Barbour observed. “This ambiguity allows for fluidity in the figures that also ties into the fluidity of self-expression.”
Most of Capron’s figures emerge from two-dimensional wall-hangings that resemble quilts with a patchwork aesthetic. Others are cut-out compositions, where the figure's body constitutes the shape of the work.
In either instance, what strikes the viewer first is Capron’s vibrant color palette.
“A signature of Maria's work is her use of really bold colors — light purples next to dark blues and fiery oranges, pastel purples, light yellows, hot pinks, pretty much any color you can think of,” Barbour noted. “And then they're overlaid with colorful screen-printed images as well. So it's really kind of cacophonous in a way, but it's still really balanced. She’s able to play with all of these competing colors and patterns in a way that is still harmonious. I think that comes from years of studying painting, the formal qualities of the works. They're just as impressive as the stories behind them.”
She employs her palette to create a host of otherworldly figures.
“Sometimes they have multiple heads or multiplied limbs, kind of signifying the fluidity of identity and the multiplicity that is inherent within us all,” said Barbour. “Sometimes you will have the eyes of one face staring into the past or into the future, to the left or the right. Other times, the eyes will look directly at the viewer. So, they are sort of inviting people in the gallery into the works themselves.”
In many of Capron’s works, the figures blend, morph and merge into one another. The viewer loses sight of where one figure ends and the other begins, representing the multiple aspects of a single individual.
“In her practice, Maria Capron has long been addressing these ideas of duality within the human and our personalities, and so she's constantly looking for different metaphors to express this visually throughout her works.”
The penumbra
Recognizing that there are rarely sharp lines of demarcation between influences that contribute to the creation of our subtly changing identities and modes of self-expression, Capron attaches shadows to her human and otherworldly figures.
“Throughout history, we have thought about shadows as the negative or dark side of a person,” Barbour observed. “In this exhibition, Marie Capron reframes that and positions the shadow as an extension of ourselves as well as a companion we have with us our entire lives. But it's also this fluid being.”
In Capron’s practice, the metaphor goes much deeper.
“Shadows are bound to us from birth,” Barbour continued. “They grow with us, but they're also very fleeting. Depending on our environment, they disappear, reappear, shift, change and move. So, there's a lot of playful energy in this show, too, because in this shadow realm, these figures have the ability to move and stretch and play in ways that our physical bodies really can't.”
Relation to hypnogogic connectivity
That netherworld between light and dark, conscious and unconscious, is also thought by many to be our closest way of connecting to the universal.
It’s referred to in psychological terms as the hypnogogic state — the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness. It’s a creative "sweet spot." For example, in a 2021 study, participants in a hypnagogic state were three times more likely to discover the "hidden rule" that could solve a mathematical problem.
Many great discoveries and inventions have emerged from the hypnagogic state. The physicist Niels Bohr effectively won the Nobel prize while semi-conscious. Drifting off to sleep, he dreamt he saw the nucleus of the atom, with the electrons spinning around it, just like the solar system with the sun and planets — and in this way he "discovered" the structure of the atom.
Paul McCartney awoke with the melody for “Yesterday” playing in his head.
“Part of this multiplicity within all of us and thinking about the different influences that shape who we are is a universal experience that many people go through,” Barbour noted. “I think Marie Capron creates these ambiguous figures so that other people can see themselves in them. You can start to recognize yourself and other people and kind of dissolve this division because we've all been through this before.”
Why Maria Capron
“The most exciting part about working in a contemporary art museum is that we get to work with living artists and provide a platform for them to express their ideas,” answered Barbour when asked why the Sarasota Art Museum commissioned the “Penumbra” exhibition.
It also afforded the museum the opportunity to champion her work.
“We thought this would be a great opportunity for Maria to create new works, push her practice, hone in on a specific narrative, and transform one of our galleries into something really bright and colorful and welcoming.”
The process was fluid.
“She put together different mock-ups, drawings, kind of like watercolors in order to demonstrate what she hoped to create for the show, and through that and just so many conversations, it was a lot of fun to put our faith and trust in an artist whose work that we’ve been following to see what she would come up with.”
The result was nine wall hangings and “Sombra.”
“When viewers walk around the corner and into the installation, they’re met by this suspended 15-foot soft sculpture made entirely out of textiles and quilted fabrics,” Barbour said. “It exists somewhere between two and three dimensions because of its twisted arms and legs, and sort of floats above the floor in the gallery space.”
Capron created it to anchor the exhibition.
“’Sombra’ is really this vibrant, colorful amalgamation of different fabrics all created by Maria Capron. It's this figure that has curling arms that extend out into the gallery, puffy fingers that are stuffed, and feet and legs that are kind of crawling or slinking through the gallery space,” Barbour added. “It’s massive in scale compared to the viewer and compared to the rest of the works in the gallery space. Maria Capron often plays with scale and makes these creatures larger than life in order to magnify their message. And the story behind this work is particularly interesting because it's the only work in the gallery that doesn't feature more than one figure. It is a solo shadow character in this piece.”
Capron thinks of it as the shadow we all share.
“So instead of being directly linked to one individual, it sort of connects us all. We are all sharing this one shadow, this one extension of ourselves and coming together as a community,” Barbour concluded.
The Sarasota Art Museum is at 1001 S. Tamiami Trail in Sarasota. Situated in the historic Old Sarasota High School building on the Ringling College Museum campus, it features contemporary art exhibitions, a bistro, and a shop.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
