María María Acha-Kutscher rewrites history. Whether in black-and-white photocollages or in large-scale drawings based on the aesthetics of 1970s comics, rectifying the past remains her main concern. Describing herself as a feminist artist, this Chilean creative, based in Madrid, carries out long-term projects that explore the cultural construction of the notion of femininity and highlight the struggles against gender discrimination.
Since 2010, she has been working at Womankind with the aim of rethinking the way in which women’s narratives have been constructed and presented, in the background of hegemonic and patriarchal discourses, since the invention of photography. To do this, she recreates, by digital photocollage, archival images with different aims to create a parallel world: sometimes the protagonists are in contradictory postures to those found in art history (Womankind. 365 days; Perseverance); sometimes they are carrying out the tasks traditionally assigned to them but displaced in ruined houses (Womankind. Derruidas); sometimes, finally, we find these women, described as “radicalized,” in interior scenes with a deliberately romantic aesthetic that may seem so banal that we would not suspect that it is a montage (Womankind. Saudade). Through this constellation of images and characters, María María Acha-Kutscher proposes a new visual landscape, more complex and nuanced, where feminist political struggles and intimate spaces are rehabilitated
Flora Fettah