Estéticas histriónicas (Histrionic Aesthetics)

“One of the main uses we have given to paint has been to beautify: we paint the walls of the places we live in and hang painted pictures on them to make them more welcoming, we paint our cars to make them more eye-catching and we even paint objects to innocently hide their nature and raise their status.

Similarly, in beauty salons, procedures involving painting are very common: there are changes of color and shape in the hair, application of pigments on the face to cover imperfections, on the lips and eyes to highlight their expressions and finally the application of layers of nail polish to transform those hard skin surfaces into elements with the potential to communicate moods and personalities.

In the compositions that make up Histrionic Aesthetics, Maria Paula Maldonado explores these transformative capacities offered by the cosmetic procedure of the manicure and crosses them with what appear to be nods to the modernist movements of geometric abstraction, subverting their rejection of subjectivity and “expression” to reveal some of the ways in which aesthetics operate.” ~Mas Allá