Myriam Martinez

Myriam Martinez made two giant tore-shaped flutes with holes in the outer wall that the audience can play, while one person, standing inside, listens to the sounds. The works promise participation, fun, encounter, and simultaneously evoke the sense of being trapped in a tight space surrounded by the noises other people make. Another large instrument is a sculpture sporting many breasts, like an ancient statue of Artemis, with perforated nipples you can blow to produce a musical tone. Again: participation, fun, breasts, ha-ha, all that fuss, right — but also the ineradicable erotization and politization of the mammary glands. In a different key, Martinez made two more sculptures: the torso of a giant baby and a mask on a tall pole that suggest disease (dis-ease, perhaps?) in the way the glaze disfigures the surface of the face. Who, to paraphrase philosopher Martha Nussbaum, is being hidden from humanity here?