MATRIX 287 / Berenice Olmedo: To ti ên einai

MATRIX 287 / Berenice Olmedo: To ti ên einai is the first US museum exhibition of the work of artist Berenice Olmedo (b. 1987, Oaxaca, Mexico; lives and works in Mexico City). Working across sculpture, performance, and kinetic installation, Olmedo is known for her anthropomorphic assemblages with fused prostheses and orthotics. Her intimate yet commanding freestanding figures and wall-based installations urge a reconsideration of standardized expectations of bodies. As the artist wrote, “There is no stigma of disability in the world I propose, but only variations of existence, variations of movement, variations on slowness and speed.”

To craft her amalgamated beings, OImedo casts medical plastics, armatures, and implants, joining prosthetic arm and leg sockets, scoliosis corsages, and collars to create works that transcend the specificities of her references. Rather than incorporate orthopedic devices as found objects, her sculptures define themselves through the conjunction of their parts and the freedom of their own completion. The title of the exhibition, To ti ên einai, is taken from a phrase written by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Translated from Greek as “the what it was to be,” this philosophical concept indicates that a being contains the entire history of how it came to be, even as it changes over time. Olmedo’s luminous and powerful forms likewise offer profound meditations on the simultaneous fragility and resiliency of life.