Maria P Vila
"Just give a bit more time to finish my letter" Basement 6
"Secreto"
Zhujiajiao Water Town Music Festival 2017
Urbancross 2018
Maria P. Vila came to Shanghai to work in two installations, one piece is "Secreto" that she has been doing for 2 years in several cities around the world.
And the other one was completely conceived in Shanghai as part of a residency in the art space Basement 6 where she also made a workshop.
Both projects were produced by AL Works.
Just give me a bit more time to finish my letter
"After an unexpected romantic separation, and due to the need to organize the confusing reasons of the loved one (A.) to justify this, Maria initiates a process of contention for 30 days, in which she sends herself a series of goodbye letters that A. had promised to send, but was not doing so. In this letter, she exposes several different explanations for the sudden absence of the lover, who we can only see as a reflection of the author’s conjectures. Through each letter, she visits several milestones of the universal discourse of love, and suggests a sense of timelessness in romantic conflict.
When A. finally sends the long-awaited letter, the artist decides not to read it. This is how she opens the process to her audience, inviting them to be anonymous receptors of a letter that is not theirs, but to which they are requested to respond. Thus, Maria P. Vila shares once more the authorship of the work of art with its spectators, offering opportunities for active participation as well as promising to send each of the responses to the lover’s letter by mail to his address in New York."
SECRETO
Based on the premise that secrets can generate shadowy places in our unconscious mind, that this project is created with the intent of public participation, inviting people to receive the secrets of others and release their own.
In a harmonious and reciprocal relationship, the premise supposes that if you read a secret, you leave a secret. In this way a web of confidential information will be woven, having been revealed in a spontaneous way and, in turn, prompting a moment’s reflexion about our memories.