Marta María Pérez
50 x 40 cm
Marta María Pérez Bravo's "Caballo" presents a solitary, rear-view figure shrouded in diaphanous white fabric, photographed in high-contrast black-and-white C-type print against an absolute void. The draped form rises in a vertical, elongated silhouette, its head enveloped and obscured, with loose strands of hair emerging at the crown while the cloth clings and twists around the torso and hips, evoking both containment and ethereal dissolution. This precise composition invokes the orisha Ochún's horse (caballo)—the possessed body as vessel for divine descent in Santería ritual—where the veiled anonymity signifies the erasure of individual identity during possession, allowing the sacred to inhabit and animate the human frame. The luminous fabric, rendered with subtle gradations of shadow and highlight, affirms the work's dual assertion: the body as conduit for spiritual arrival and the simultaneous surrender of personal agency to metaphysical force. Conceptually, the photograph asserts the gendered dynamics of trance and embodiment, positioning the shrouded woman as an unequivocal emblem of ritual mediation, cultural continuity, and resistance to secular erasure. By excluding the face and frontal presence, Pérez Bravo centers the act of possession itself, establishing the draped figure as a resolute sentinel of syncretic heritage, enduring amid exile, marginalization, and the persistent negotiation between human vulnerability and divine potency.
Provenance
Marta Maria Studio > Galeria AtizarExhibitions
"Algo mágico," Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, Mexico, 1998.
"La Mirada: Looking at Photography in Latin America Today," Daros Exhibitions, Zurich, Switzerland, January 17–March 29, 2003.
"Bodies of Evidence: Contemporary Perspectives," RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, United States, July 1–September 25, 2005.
"La Mirada: Fotografien und Videos aus der Daros Latinamerica Collection," Museum der Moderne Rupertinum, Salzburg, Austria, October 30, 2010–January 16, 2011.
"Women Pioneers II," Throckmorton Fine Art, Inc., New York, New York, United States, July 13–October 7, 2023.