Margarita Azurdia: A Universe, Documented presents over 150 artworks, documents, photographs, videos, and personal objects—many of which have never been displayed publicly before—from the archive of the late Guatemalan artist Margarita Azurdia. The exhibition was commissioned by La Nueva Fábrica and it is curated by Rossina Cazali.

Margarita Azurdia (1931-1998), also known as Margot Fanjul, was one of the most relevant Guatemalan artists of the mid-Sixties. Her best-known works are a series of large-format abstract paintings, with unusual color combinations and geometric shapes—mainly rhombuses—inspired by the Indigenous textile designs of Guatemala. In the mid-Seventies, the artist ventured into non-object-based art and produced a series of fantastical sculptures, Homenaje a Guatemala [Homage to Guatemala], consisting of polychromatic wood carvings adorned with clothing, ceramic objects, feathers, and other elements reminiscent of the altars of the Guatemalan highlands. 

In 1976, Azurdia moved to Paris and became involved in feminist movements, body-centered art, and media such as poetry, artist’s books, and drawing. Upon her return to Guatemala in 1984, she begun the project Laboratorio de Creatividad [Creativity Laboratory] with artists Benjamín Herrarte and Fernando Iturbide, with whom she explored movement and the relationship between dance, ritual, and the sacred. From the Sixties to the mid-Nineties, the artist created a body of work that united art and poetry with spirituality and nature. 

Through a wide spectrum of materials from the Azurdia archive, the exhibition suggests new ways of thinking about the artist’s life and work. The project brings to the forefront an artistic practice that Azurdia crafted slowly over time. The importance of recreating the artist’s cultural moment sparked the inclusion of a series of works by her contemporaries, whether due to their interests, aesthetics, complicities, or friendship, including Daniel Shafer, Luis Díaz, Jamie Bischof, and Joyce “de Guatemala” Vourvoulias.

The presentation of textiles and the various objects she collected, alongside her artworks, shed light on the artist’s obsessions, while her drawings—particularly those centered around her childhood—blur the border between art and documentation. Through the accumulation of documents, images, and video documentation found in the artist’s archives, publics are invited to explore, digress, and find points of connection with the radical modernity of Azurdia’s work and experience the rich contexts, complexities, and conflicts that influenced her artistic trajectory and that form an inescapable part of her creative universe.

The exhibition is made possible by the generous loans of Milagro de Amor, the organization that oversees the works and archive of Margarita Azurdia, directed by Margarita Azurdia’s granddaughter, Niki Fanjul. 

Image courtesy of Milagro de Amor.

For press release, please click HERE.