Taller Maria José Franco Maldonado
TECHNIQUES
| Textile | Painting | Installation | Drawing & Printmaking
The space is designed as an atelier where experimentation and play are encouraged, with creation being the priority. Various techniques are explored: painting, drawing, collage, and primarily textile techniques such as hand embroidery, vertical loom, tufting, punch needle, kantan, and sewing machine. Experimentation with a torch for wire sculptures is also possible. The idea of the atelier is to combine techniques to explore new formats and create without pretensions.
María José Franco Maldonado
María José Franco Maldonado is in a constant search for languages to portray emotions. Art is her vehicle for recording and projecting her own life experiences. Threads have been her tool to represent the experience of living in her body, as a woman, in her time and space. She attempts to reflect the tragedy of women, the feelings, heartbreaks, loneliness, and alienation in a phallocentric world, where emotional repression leads to contradictions of the essential. She believes in the transgressive potential of the feminine, exploring sexual nature and abolishing the hierarchy of masculine/feminine. In her works, there is the influence of women creators who preceded her, starting with her grandmother and her mother. Manual craftsmanship is the central axis of her artistic process in constant learning. She is interested in form and beauty, trying to affect this earth that contains us as little as possible. Currently, she focuses on textile techniques alongside painting, screen printing, drawing, and sculpture. She has presented her work in Buenos Aires, New York, Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, El Tambo, Miami, Melbourne, and Auckland.
Intallations
Duplex apartment of 64 square meters. The master bedroom is located in the loft or second floor, it has a desk that can be used in that space or in the main one on the first floor. The second room is used as a storage room, housing a drawing board, a frame rack, frames for different techniques; it is the place where we store most of the materials and tools. It has a closet or storage room where we keep textiles. The main living room is very bright, light enters all day from both sides. In the workshop, the following can be used: tufting gun, projector, easel, gasoline torch, home sewing machine, frames of different sizes, kantan needle, punch needle, weaving needle, classic needle, yarns, threads, acrylics, different types of fabrics, and scraps.