Lives and works in Lima, Peru.
His practice focuses on the romantic and commercial representation of desire, love, leather sexuality* and urban economies in the form of text, installation and sculpture.
He/she obtained a Master of Fine Arts from the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland, in 2022. His projects have been included in solo and group exhibitions, most recently at ICPNA-Institut Culturel Péruvien-Nord-Américain (Peru), CALM - Centre d'Art La Meute, Lausanne, (Switzerland) Amore, Basel (Switzerland), Gessneralle, Zurich (Switzerland), the ZonaMaco art fair, Mexico City (Mexico). He/She has also been selected for the Jan Van Eyck Academy on 2025.
* One of the many Spanish ways of pronouncing the English word queer / leather.
©Susi Ornaments II2022 - Marisabel Arias
Susi (perfectly together) is an exploration of materials and visual symbolism relating to the heart’s status as a universally recognized symbol of love, from romanticism to hyper-commercialization. The artist has retraced the first appearances of the heart as symbol from Greek civilization onwards. Cyrene, a now abandoned city, engraved this emblem upon its coins in reference to a product it exported, silphium. Above and beyond its economic importance, this herb was also known at the time for its medicinal properties, notably its use as an abortifacient. This link with fertility may be considered to be the origins of the heart as shorthand for narratives (tragic or otherwise) about love and sex. The artist intertwines this ancient past with representations from other periods of history. For example, in the Middle Ages, philosopher and poet Christine de Pizan employed the heart in her work Epistre Othea (1401). It appeared on the pages of illuminated manuscripts as an allegorical organ, given by men and women as an offering to Venus. It became a way of expressing generosity, tenderness and goodness – qualities which are later seen as the embodiment of love.
The decorative aspect of the ceramic object we have here, like a piece of jewellery or a lucky charm, contains this same symbolism, which reappears under different guises from age to age, passing from legend to legend to reach its present-day manifestation, that of the hetero-patriarchal couple as the ideal locus and expression of love.
Susi Ornaments II is to be seen alongside an essay-poster written by Marisabel Arias.
