On the occasion of Frieze Masters, London, The Mayor Gallery presented Feliza Bursztyn (b. 1933 Bogotá, Colombia - d. 1982 Paris, France) who was a pioneering Colombian artist whose work, alongside that of her Brazilian contemporaries Gego and Mira Schendel, revolutionised the Latin American art scene. Throughout her career, the artist combined and interrogated ideas about art, machines, craft, modernity, and labour through the lens of hysteria- a term which since the nineteenth century has been used to describe female instability, abnormality, and emotional excess. Bursztyn created her kinetic sculptures using discarded fragments of machines, tires, cables and other metal bits adding, with time, hand-dyed fabrics, motors, light, and sound to produce increasingly complex installations and environmental proportions. By deploying the notion and tropes of madness, Bursztyn thus explored the irrationalities, fragilities, and ambiguities of modern life.
October 13, 2024
