Marta María Pérez
Caballo, 2000
Pigment Print on Epson Luster Paper from Original Negative
20 x 16 inches
50.8 x 40.6 cm
50.8 x 40.6 cm
Edition 1 of 15
Marta María Pérez’s “Caballo” asserts the total surrender of individual identity in Santería ritual possession through a pigment print that presents a solitary figure seen from behind, fully enveloped in...
Marta María Pérez’s “Caballo” asserts the total surrender of individual identity in Santería ritual possession through a pigment print that presents a solitary figure seen from behind, fully enveloped in luminous white fabric against an absolute void. The draped form rises in a vertical, elongated silhouette, its head completely obscured and only faint strands of hair escaping at the crown, while the cloth clings and twists around the torso and hips with ethereal precision. This precise visual language invokes the “caballo”—the human vessel mounted and ridden by an orisha during trance—where the veiled anonymity and surrendered posture signify the deliberate erasure of personal agency so that the divine may descend and speak through the body. The dramatic contrast and luminous quality of the fabric affirm the work’s central tension: the physical form as both sacred conduit and site of radical self-dissolution. Conceptually, the photograph positions the shrouded figure as an unequivocal emblem of ritual mediation, gendered spiritual power, and cultural endurance, transforming bodily surrender into a profound act of resistance against secular erasure and the patriarchal constraints embedded in Cuban syncretic practice.
Exhibitions
“La Mirada. Looking at Photography in Latin America Today. Part 1,” Daros Museum, Zürich, Switzerland, October 25, 2002 – January 4, 2003 (Part of the Daros Latinamerica Collection presentation.)
“Cuba – Ficción y Fantasía,” Casa Daros, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2013 (Featured works from the Daros Latinamerica Collection, including photography by Marta María Pérez Bravo.)
Literature
“Cuba – Ficción y Fantasía,” Daros Latinamerica Collection / Casa Daros, Rio de Janeiro, 2013 (catalog; reproduces the work from the Daros Latinamerica Collection).
Publications
https://martamariaperezbravo.com/seleccion-de-obra-2000/https://www.casadaros.net/es/exhibition/3042/artworks/