ALEJANDRA PRIETO

(Santiago, 1980)

Through her sculptural practice, Alejandra Prieto alludes to global capitalism. The materials used to build her sculptures and the shapes these take on mimic objects whose lines of production and consumption involve a whole chain of agents and places. Often working with coal, Prieto reproduces objects that are both of mass consumption and handcrafted. Through their re-creation, they evoke the histories of exploitation and expropriation involved in their fabrication and distribution. In Les jardiniers du Roy, Hermès (2010), the artist recreates a silk handkerchief from the French fashion house Hermés in coal. Throughout the process, however, she rearranges the hierarchy of values: her effort to reproduce the botanical illustration by Maurice Tanchant on coal involves precision, specialization, but also exhaustive manual labor. In Gloves (2016), the chain of specialization is inverted: the color and brightness of the material evokes a pair of leather gloves. Nonetheless, the artist replaces a luxurious material with a cheap one, carrying out a handcrafted work that would conventionally be automated and/or mass-produced.