Press Release - "En el país de la memoria" by Argelia Rebollo and Liz Hernández
Argelia Rebollo - “El Aleph de Argelia (Argelia's Aleph)"
Acrylic on linen. 24 x 36 inches. Framed. Year unknown.
pt.2:
“En el país de la memoria” (In the Country of Memory)
a duo exhibition by
Argelia Rebollo and Liz Hernández
Opening Saturday, October 28th, 6pm
Showing through December 2nd
1525 Webster St.
Oakland, CA 94612
To receive a preview of the exhibition contact
info@part2gallery.com
pt.2 Gallery is pleased to announce "En el país de la memoria" (In the Country of Memory), a captivating duo exhibition featuring work by Liz Hernández and her late great aunt, Argelia Rebollo.
The show presents a collection of paintings on linen by Rebollo, all of which have never been exhibited before. Hernández created a series of sculptural works in rusted metal and stone in response to her paintings, letters, and relics. In addition to this new material exploration, she developed an installation piece using microcontrollers for the first time.
The creative conversation between Hernández and Rebollo bridges the gap between the past and present, exploring themes of memory, selfhood, and the internal struggles of those who leave their country of origin.
Liz Hernández - ”Hacerme comprensible para los demás me hace sentir un vacío interior (Making myself understandable to others makes me feel empty inside)”
Rusted aluminum. 31 x 24.25 inches stacked. Framed. 2023.
There is a banished voice that persists in my dreams.
There is something that seeks to birth my unborn ways.
The ignored pieces of my silent self.
Vicente Huidobro
We are so deeply seduced by what remains hidden, by that which cannot be grasped completely and can only be sensed or perceived through clues, and the unfathomable mystery of the unrevealed. We now enter into a territory of shadows. Liz Hernández welcomes us into a country where memory is as speculative as fiction, where it is far more interesting to suspect than to verify. A territory marked by quicksand where one person can be many, in constant interaction, conflict, and reconciliation. A place that is fertile ground for imagination and risk. Identity, in such a country, becomes blurred. At play here is the multiplicity of the individual, the exchanging of masks, and the disguise of the name.
Once banished from our firmly set personality, what presences secretly inhabit us? What reflections do we see when we face the mirror? Are they ancestors or future interlocutors? Can we invent a common language with these inhabitants, or must we silence them? Maybe we could, as Liz Hernández does, collaborate with them. Be hospitable and construct relationships of familiarity and estrangement with them, carving their bodies within us, like intimate monuments.
Who moves the hands that type these words?
Ventriloquist, in Latin, means “one who speaks with the belly.” These are people who know how to make voices and sounds so discreetly that they appear to be emitted by another being, usually a puppet or marionette. When ventriloquists perform in front of an audience, they can minimize the gestures of their mouth to such a point that the audience cannot perceive them from a distance. I think of Liz Hernández as a ventriloquist who crosses temporal boundaries and possesses the gift of modifying her voice to the point of emitting a pitch different from her own, almost without moving her lips. Liz produces a kind of “invisible speech” and projects a voice that belongs to her and her great aunt, Argelia Rebollo. Or is it a sound born of the relationship between the two that cannot belong to anyone?
Once we exit the self and invent others, we can propose alternative horizons that might free us from the character imposed on us when we arrive in this world. In this exhibition, which is a luminous experiment, Liz Hernández creates the unborn ways that Vicente Huidobro speaks of, those ignored bits and pieces that inhabit us and are waiting to escape from our belly.
Written by Valeria Mata
Translated from Spanish by Marina Azahua
Argelia Rebollo - "Mapa del país de la memoria: territorio perdido (Map of the country of memory: lost territory)". Acrylic on linen. 9 x 12 inches. Framed. Year unknown.
Argelia Rebollo (1928-1988), relocated from Mexico to the USA in the late 1950s. She was a translator and autodidact painter. Her work primarily consisted of intricate paintings on linen and tin sheets. Rebollo's practice is characterized by its captivating portrayal of deeply introspective moments within the intimate confines of domestic environments. Her estate is located in Puebla, Mexico, where she spent the last years of her life.
Liz Hernández (b. 1993) is a Mexican artist based in Oakland, California since 2011. Her work spans a variety of techniques—painting, sculpture, embroidery, and writing —which she uses to blur the space between the real and the imaginary. Deeply influenced by the craft traditions of Mexico, her practice investigates the language of materials and the different stories they tell. She draws inspiration from anthropology, syncretism, oral traditions, and the landscape of Mexico City, always looking for an element that breaks the normalcy of everyday life. Her partially autobiographical work has led to collaboration with her family in the shape of very personal research. Hernández has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.