Maria Pia Mosquera is a Colombian-born artist based in Eora/Sydney, Australia.

Hermana Muerte – Sister Death

By Tony Twigg – Slot Projects

When Maria proposed an exhibition of her finely rendered paintings to SLOT, it seemed like an opportunity to celebrate the day of the dead with her. All soles day or for those keen on the Americanisation of our society, Halloween. Then when Maria arrived with her show, she said “I have something to tell you – I am not Mexican, I am Colombian, you see the Mexicans are Mayan and they have the day of the dead, in Colombia we are Chibcha, we don’t have the day of the dead but Halloween, because of the Americans is very big.” When I asked after the Spanish, all Maria said was, “of course we are all Catholics”. And as if to underline the fact, a Filipino friend commented “you know we have the wheel of fortune at Perya’s in the Philippines, it’s called a Roleta ng Kapalaran. Maria has given us a wheel of fortune of such mixed origin that it might as well be ours and our lives that are tumbling around to an indeterminate fate in its carnival of choosing.

With the taxonomy of the day of the dead obscured by centuries of colonialism Maria looked to an ancient reference – La portentosa vida de la Muerte (The astounding life of death) written by Monk Joaquin Bolaños, a Mexican Franciscan, in 1792. It is an allegory, exploring man’s follies by following the journey of death through the eyes of the skeletal daughter of Adam and Eve. Who falls in love several times, whose husbands keep dying on their wedding night. The 18 illustrations that show death in among other roles, asa bony baby, a bride and a triumphant ruler are the creationof the Mexican engraver Francisco Aguera Bustamante who illustrated the book.

This is generally thought of as the origin of the satirical living skeleton imagery that is typical of the Mexican day of the dead and that Maria has adopted in her “wheel of fortune”. Here her images can be read as a poem of life’s pivotal events, forever spinning: “Let yourself go to the music – Eaten by a shark – Fallen to pieces – You are born – You fall in love – Bad luck!(Black cat) – Drifting away – Reap what you sow – The sleep of reason creates monsters – don’t know how to feel – Drinking smoking pleasure – transition…after life?”. Go on spin it, the truth of your destiny awaits, well, for about as long as it does when you spin a poker machine, “life is a cabaret old cum”.

La portentosa vida de la muerte was censored by the Inquisition for its irreverent treatment of death, and using skeletons in a satirical commentary on the politics of its day. Copies were burned, today we happily laugh in the face of death. Perhaps, or is that Halloween, the spector of strangers handing out lollies to children in the dark of night?

Hermana Muerte

An interactive art installation in collaboration with MacGyver Models

Slot Projects

October 29 - November 30

Photos Tony Twigg

Can we make peace with our own mortality? Why fear the most certain thing in our lives?

Life, like a wheel of fortune, from the moment we are born to the moment we die, we don't know where it will land, only that it will end is certain. What has destiny in store? Head to 38 Botany Road, Alexandria, give it a spin, see where it lands, interpret at your own will and remember to celebrate the life we have and to celebrate the lives of the ones that have gone. As a popular Latin-American saying: Todas las personas mueren, no todas las personas viven (All people die, but not all people live)

A big thank you to MacGyver Models for their technical assistance, without it this work would not have been possible.

This work is dedicated to Aldemar Mosquera (my dad) and Janice Davis (my mother-law) who passed away this year.

https://slotprojects.net/