La Mordida; The Bite & The Bitten

Presents pieces of a multidisciplinary project blending figurative imagery with the confessional journey of an immigrant woman artist. It began as an act of healing and evolved over twenty years into embroideries, photography, poems, sculpture, audio-poems, and live performance interventions, each handcrafted and developed by Chilean artist Montserrat Vargas, since her teenager years. 

The completed series of work called La Mordida; The Bite & the Bitten consist of 7 embroideries, 11 photographs, 17 poems and 4 sculptures.

…A compelling representation of a woman’s body scarred with memory…

…An angry and relieved voice, transmitted by the mouth, combining the past with the present; The mixture of foreign soils transported by poetry and embroidery…

…A dialogue about the metaphor of teeth; Teeth that bite to posses anyone who might have the meaning of love; Teeth that bite anything that might give sense of belonging to a stateless life; A bite to attack myself and others…

…The aggressor’s mouth, as the only repetitive memory of a sexual abuse; The mouth as the imaginary fount of artistic inspiration; The mouth’s ability to smile in resistance to experience as an immigrant and as a woman…

…A rebellion against objectification with sculpture, embroidery, photographs, collage, sound, poetry, and live performance interventions.

 

La Mordida; The Bite and The Bitten, has been published partially on Viceversa Magazine, in English and  Spanish.