“En un país de machistas, ¡hágase la loca!“
“In a Sexist Country, pretend to be the Mad One!“
— Feliza Bursztyn, 1979
Feliza Bursztyn: Welding Madness is the first museum retrospective of Colombian artist Feliza Bursztyn (1933 Bogota, Colombia–1982, Paris, France) to be presented outside her home country. Bringing together approximately 50 sculptures, films, installations, and archival material, most of which are shown for the first time in Europe, this ambitious, career-spanning survey at Muzeum Susch positions Bursztyn as one of Latin America’s most important sculptors of the 20th century.
A pioneer in kinetic sculpture, Feliza Bursztyn created wrecked metal sculptures with ghostlike yet comical humanoid traits that addressed the social effects caused by the aggressive modernization of Colombian society. Composed of industrial junk, often motor-animated, these works perform a theater of dystopian industrial hybrids. Bursztyn’s immersive installations are characterized by their disconcerting mechanical sound produced by the frenetic vibration of the sculptures, as...well as by occasional music scores accompanying the pieces. The artist’s works and sculptural mise-en-scènes enact sites of aesthetic resistance and antithetical political investment, creating a unique experience that raises awareness on the situation and the perception of women in a male-dominated society and reveal the troublesome face of modernity.
Born Jewish in a Catholic country, the child of Polish immigrants, and a feminist in a country dominated by the conservatism of the church, Bursztyn was an outsider. It was from this position that she witnessed the rapid industrialization occurring throughout Latin America in the postwar era. An ardent supporter of the Cuban Revolution, Bursztyn was skeptical of the pervasive enthusiasm among political and cultural elites for developmentalism which, in her view, exacerbated extant social and economic divisions. Married at nineteen and divorced with three children at the age of twenty-four, Bursztyn rejected the circumscribed nature of women’s lives in Colombia and intentionally flouted social mores, embracing the mantle of La Loca (the mad one), as she was dubbed by the press. Her political views informed the material and the content of her sculpture driving her to challenge the social and artistic status quo.
Bursztyn’s art and life were deeply and constantly intertwined. Her parents, Polish Jews, set out in 1933 for South America. When they reached Columbia, they were greeted with the news of Hitler’s victory in Germany’s parliamentary elections and decided to stay. Feliza was born the same year. Her father, trained as a rabbi, established himself as a textile manufacturer and became a leader within the city’s tiny Jewish community. His rapid success afforded his daughter the opportunity to study art in Bogotá and later at the Art Students League in New York, as well as the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris. This position of relative privilege allowed Bursztyn to travel widely, which she would continue to do throughout her life. Thus, she became familiar with contemporary artistic developments and established relationships across the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
Her studio in Bogotá – a converted garage next to her father’s factory – became a meeting point for artists, writers, journalists, musicians, politicians and critics. It was there that she produced her first Chatarras (Junk Sculptures) in 1961. Bronze – the material she was trained to work with in Paris –, was scarce in Columbia, leading her to turn to junkyard scraps and work with discarded fragments of machines, tires, cables, bolts and other metal bits. She would use these materials throughout her career adding hand-dyed fabrics, motors, light, and sound to produce increasingly complex, room-sized installations. Eventually, Bursztyn produced immersive, experiential spaces: her sculptures clung to walls, hung from ceilings, perched on stages and carried out choreographed dances set to music in dramatically lit and adorned rooms. In multiple ways, her works were intended to disturb, provoke, push the limits, and reject the status quo. She collaborated with writers, experimental musicians, filmmakers, and theater directors in works that drew inspiration from sources ranging from the natural environment and popular culture to psychoanalysis.
Bursztyn’s political views, extravagant lifestyle and her vociferous support of left-wing thinking and causes resulted in her frequent questioning and occasional detention by the state security forces. Following an arrest and two-day detention in 1981, she fled the country and was granted political asylum in Mexico. She emigrated to Paris the following year where she died suddenly at the age of forty-nine.
CHATARRAS
Inspired by her training in Europe under the influence of her Parisian pedagogue, Ossip Zadkine, and her peers, more specifically the Nouveaux Réalistes, Bursztyn began her Chatarras (Junk Sculptures) series in 1961. She welded discarded scrap metal, corroded tires, and rusted cables together into rough, abstract compositions, significantly challenging prevalent ideals of beauty and nobility. The young and relatively unknown artist first unveiled at the highly esteemed Bogotá gallery El Callejón and became the first Colombian artist to use “non-art” materials. She, provocatively, gave each assemblage a romantic, feminine and organic name such as Una Flor (Flower) or Niña alegre (Happy Girl) which not only contrasted with their rough mechanical appearance but also mocked traditional gender roles and the perceived masculinity of art itself.
LAS HISTÉRICAS
In 1968 Feliza Bursztyn unveiled a new body of work which she titled Las histéricas (The Hysterical Ones). The flexible metal strips, which the artist bent into parabolic and circular configurations, were made of stainless steel which Bursztyn acquired at a factory that fabricated radiators, countertops, and kitchen utensils. Combining them with a small electrical motor, which she left visible, she set her work in motion and activated various aspects of the exhibition space. The awkwardness of the movements and their discordant sound resulted in darkly humorous works that could be either suspended from the ceiling or attached to the walls but also reflected light, cast shadows, and made disturbing noise.
The title of these raving, cacophonous, and ironic sculptures is ambiguous. While intended to be ironical, it seems to reinforce at the same time the patriarchal perspective of Freudian psychoanalysis, which has historically applied the term hysteria primarily to women and their sexuality.
This body of work appears in a short film titled Hoy Feliza (Today Feliza, 1968), created by her friend, the experimental filmmaker Luis Ernesto Arocha. The film captures Las histéricas in action – vibrating and mad – intertwined with images of the artist herself, but also with dozens of still images of Hollywood divas and sex symbols, including Greta Garbo, Bette Davis and Marlon Brando. The 8mm-film debuted at an exhibition at the Salón Cultural held in the gallery of the Banco de la República, where it was projected on the facade of the building.
LAS CAMAS
In 1972, Bursztyn began her series Las Camas (The Beds). The sculptures consisted of metal bed frames fitted with motors and draped in satin fabric. The exhibition Las camas took place in 1974 at Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO). Bursztyn fitted each bed with an electric motor that triggered suggestive vibrations, lending the piece a blatantly erotic charge. The beds with their suggested busy occupants were scattered in a darkened gallery with dim spot lighting. The dimmed atmosphere and the enclosure reinforced the feeling of privacy, a notion at odds with the public nature of the museum.
COLOR SCULPTURES
In 1981 Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote: “Feliza has never done something more subversive than turning car accidents into artworks”. Indeed, in 1968 Bursztyn had been involved in a dramatic accident that left her face, smile and expression transformed forever.
Bursztyn’s method of turning scraps into sculptures by welding them together brings to mind the strategy of the bricoleur which – as cultural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss argued – either by necessity or by conscious decision, works within “the constraints imposed by the particular civilization” rather than attempt to go beyond them. By using parts of a car as her primary material, Bursztyn not only recalled their former glamorous life, but also complicated the ideas developed by the Nouveaux Réalistes or contemporaneous artists working under the pop art rubric. “Pop art” in Columbia is distinct from its meaning in more industrialized countries and while her use of car scraps can refer to economic development and to a growing consumer culture, it also simultaneously points to scarcity and underdevelopment.
In these works, Bursztyn points to yet another dimension: her colorful assemblages may be read as allusions to proletarian labor. As the gallery owner Alonso Garcés would reflect years later, “Feliza faced an even greater difficulty due to her being a woman in a society in which art made by women was related more to painting on porcelain than to soldering with acetylene torch”. Indeed, her adoption of welding as an artistic technique challenged classical gender stereotypes.
ROSEMARY’S BABY
Bursztyn’s work frequently engaged with aspects of popular culture, including music and cinema. Rosemary’s Baby borrows its title from Roman Polanski’s eponymous film, released in Colombia in 1969. Based on Ira Levin’s novel, the plot of Rosemary’s Baby is centered on the pregnancy of Rosemary Woodhouse and her growing suspicion that her elderly neighbors are members of a Satanic cult. Thematically, the film echoed the concerns of Bursztyn’s own oeuvre: paranoia, psychoanalysis, gender dynamics, women’s liberation, and Christianity.
Bursztyn’s Rosemary’s Baby (1973) is composed of a crib, steel scrap, black satin sheets, and a motor. It is the only work in the Camas series to use a crib rather than a bed. The steel frame, originally painted black, was later painted white and the sides removed. The disturbing nature of the work – no doubt part of the artist’s intention – was reinforced by an extant double-exposure photograph of the work with a ghostly self-portrait floating above it. Given Bursztyn’s predilection for Freudian analysis, it is worth noting the resonance this work must have had for the artist, who, by this time, was separated from her daughters following the dissolution of her abusive first marriage.
MINIMÁQUINAS / MINIESCULTURAS
Throughout the 1960s, the scale of Bursztyn’s work increased exponentially. With the Minimáquinas (Minimachines), she reversed course and began producing smaller-scale works. Made from disassembled typewriters and other small manual machines, these small structures are intricate. To compound the preciousness lent to them by their high degree of detail and, often, delicacy, Bursztyn chrome-plated some of them gold and silver. The artist intended these intimately sized constructions to be manipulated by the audience, thereby creating yet another connection between spectator and artwork.
The artist continued to create miniature sculptures at various times throughout the 1970s. In 1971, they inspired the filmmaker Ernesto Arocha to make another short film, titled Azilef (“Feliza” spelled backwards). Their machine-like and zoomorphic qualities make them appear as alien creatures, spaceships, or satellites that move through empty space. The film’s soundtrack was composed and performed especially for the project by the Bogotá-based, Beatles-inspired rock band Los Teipus and included a psychedelic folk-rock song, with lyrics in English about magic, dreams, love, the universe, and possibilities. Arocha’s film locates Bursztyn’s work in relation to hippismo (hippyism), with its rejection of convention, ideas of sexual freedom, renunciation of materialism, experimentation with drugs, embrace of new popular art forms, and utopian belief in the possibility of a better future.
LA BAILA MECÁNICA
La baila mecánica premiered on April 5, 1979 at the Galeria Garcés Velásquez in Bogotá; it represented the pinnacle of Bursztyn’s long-standing interest in experimenting with material, light, sound, and movement. Although only five elements were ultimately exhibited, the “ballet” initially consisted of seven large, upright, and mysterious figures dressed in shrouds that the artist humanized and individualized by giving each a name. They “dance”, alone or in each other’s company, with their own distinct movements, on a music composed by the twelfth-century composer Perotinus Magnus. In 1979 the artist explained, “I am convinced that each sculpture has its own character, its own personality, its own movement, a distinct tone, a world of its own. Exactly like people. So naturally they each have a name […].”
There is something anti-monumental and deeply troubling about these motorized, unstable and precarious veiled figures. The visible electrical cords attached to each figure add an ominous quality. At the time, La baila mecánica may have evoked images of violent repression, given that, following his election in 1978 president Julio César Turbay Ayala instituted a Security Statute in response to the growth of Marxist guerrilla movements. During his tenure (1978-1982) he facilitated the right for the military to detain, interrogate, and for judges to suspect terrorists, leading to increasing human rights violations, including arbitrary detention and torture. When looked at from this perspective, La baila mecánica becomes a tragic foreshadowing of the artist’s own future.
The work toured in 1979 and was exhibited at the La Tertulia Museum of Modern Art in Cali, Galeria Rzeźby in Warsaw, as well as in Kraków and La Havana.
Imágenes de la Exposición
Feliza Bursztyn in her studio with La Baila Mecánica (1979), ca. 1979. Courtesy Estate of Feliza Bursztyn. Photo by Raphael Moure.
Entrada actualizada el el 14 dic de 2021
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