To recall Magda Skupinska’s recently closed show, Layú (meaning ‘land’ in Isthmus Zapotec, a language native to parts of Oaxaca) at Maximillian William is to recall a sensorially minimal and fresh experience. In Layú’s muted tones, its assemblage of traditional, organic forms and materials and sparse hang, lies a vitality and quiet vibrancy that bares the influence Skupinska has assimilated from the ancient indigenous Zapotec culture and its traditions, and potently relays a crucial reminder of humanity’s connection to land and nature.
Installation view. © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
From the strange times in which we find ourselves now, the delicate minimalism and humble materiality of the show, and its manifest sensibility towards patience and of re-connecting with nature, strikes a chord with our current state of isolation and the sight of desolation that surrounds us. Stillness, nature and our grounding foundations, are the instincts that Skupinska’s paean to ‘layú’ speaks to.
Installation view © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
Centre-stage to the show – literally commanding the centre of the space – is Skupinska’s freestanding installation Three Sisters, comprising a wooden tent-like structure from which hangs what appears to be thick, wiry hair, in three clearly defined colours – subtle shades of blue, white and green – that falls straight and long to the floor, collecting in a mop of waves.
Installation view © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
On the reverse side of the structure, each band of colour is tied into hefty, robust knots, strikingly marking their distinct properties, and in the process personifying them, as if they were three individual characters. And this is exactly true to what the piece aims to achieve; the hairs are in fact fibres from the abacá plant (a species of banana) which Skupinska has soaked respectively in the oils of corn, bean and squash, and alludes to ‘The Three Sisters’ – an allegory of the land’s three crucial crops and the indigenous wisdom of planting them together (known agriculturally as ‘companion planting’) in acknowledgment of their inherent co-dependency.
Installation view © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
The sensory experience of the piece is not only visual or spatial, it is olfactory too – standing close to the piece I was able to notice that the fibres are fragrant, the aroma of each of the three sections recollects the integral type of crop whose oil it was infused with. The work’s tribute to the inter-dependency of plants and humans’ sensitivity towards this, via the ancient traditions of indigenous Zapotec culture, is deeply felt, and a poignant call to our symbiotic relationship to the land and its plants.
Installation view © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
The works hung on the walls of the gallery (paintings, although they appear as much installations as the piece in the centre of the gallery) all use as their support a surface of woven palm leaves, traditionally known as ‘petates’ – used in all facets of life, from sleeping on, to laying out foods to dry, to wrapping the body upon burial or cremation – crafted in a traditional manner by women from an indigenous community in Santo Domingo Albarradas, Oaxaca.
Installation view © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
A picture of the women who wove them hangs by the entrance to the gallery, and their names are listed beneath the press release. The surfaces themselves are testament again to the bond between humans and plants, their tight grid both organic and controlled. Onto these, Skupinska renders forms using ground corn in its natural variety of colours – an essential and pure palette.
Installation view © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
The forms are hard-edged and precise, yet the texture of their surface is delicately cracked and coarse, like microcosmic salt plains. Viewing it, it seemed a marvel the way that the pigments’ raw, pasty make-up had so steadfastly adhered to the surface, suspended in its natural state yet simultaneously reconstituted as purposed slabs of colour. In Skupinska’s work lies an articulate tension between natural forms, in their natural states, and transformative processes that speak to humanity’s frequently implausible and ingeniously adaptive collaboration with nature.
Installation view © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
Formally, Skupinska’s work appears to root itself in the lineage of the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s and 70s. It shares with the movement its use of natural, organic materials, and an intelligent manipulation of them. Although, Skupinska’s work is equally as indebted to the culture and traditions of the indigenous Zapotec people, whom she familiarised herself with while partaking in the residency at Fundación Casa Wabi in Oaxaca, and thereafter remaining in Mexico the year prior to the exhibition. In their educative capacity in her practice and ideas, her use of natural materials amounts more to a harmonious cooperation with nature than it does an interventionist manipulation.
Installation view © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
Her savvy use of natural and unchanged materials – the paintings comprise only palm and corn – and colours – all are naturally occurring, from the oils that the hanging fibres are dyed in, to the pigments derived from different varieties of ground corn – also evokes the idea of the ‘readymade’, pre-dating Povera to early conceptualism.
Installation view © Magda Skupinska, courtesy of Maximillian William, London.
It brings to my mind Duchamp’s words, that since paint is a ready-made product (he was referring to mass-produced tubes) then all paintings are ‘assemblages’ or ‘readymade aided’, with the funny inversion that in Skupinska’s case such materials are all natural and largely untreated. Skupinska’s works are very much assemblages in this way, assembling elements from nature with a learned and purposeful logic.