A certain shade

Porto Alegre, Brazil / 2023

Solo exhibition at the Ling Institute (Porto Alegre – Brazil), curated by Paulo Miyada.

“We live in constant rotation, attracted by  a force proportional to the mass and size of this sphere we call Earth. Not exactly a sphere, with its flat caps, thus defined for geometric approximation and convenience of representation.

In the seemingly harmless combination of geometric approximation and convenience of representation of the world is where Marina Camargo establishes her artistic practice. Much of her recent work dives into the margin of error of cartographic conventions that record, perpetuate, and expand hegemonic conceptions of territory. We often forget that all maps arise from projections and act as tools for control (be it cognitive, symbolic, technical, or effectively military). Marina helps us renew our unfamiliarity and doubts, coupling said maps with another kind of projection: the shadow.

Born of the concealment of rays of light by opaque bodies, shadows give hints of the size and shape of things and their surfaces, therefore revealing unmeasurable dimensions and leading to ambiguities and misconceptions. An eclipse, for example, proves positions, distances, and sizes of celestial bodies, while also hiding the source of the light. It is an instinct to want to avoid the shade, to delay the eclipse, to let go of the discoveries arising from it, and to dream of the absolute (and unattainable) correction of maps, without distortions and arbitrariness. Marina resists this instinct, stepping back into the shadow, reaching the antumbra, from where there is enough distance to see the halo of light behind the opaque body causing the eclipse. Staying with the map, making it into shade, allowing it to soften, to tarnish, to dissolve, to sing.

What we see in the exhibition A Certain Shade is a new step in Marina Camargo’s journey, as she begins to touch the shards of this softened shade-cartography and bend it like an origami, a fable, an animal.”

Paulo Miyada