Maria Alcaide is a visual artist working across installation, film and text.
She is interested in flexible methodologies and references that haven’t been validated by the art field or academia, always taking as a starting point her personal experience and her own economic and spatial limitations as a body.
Performativity plays
a key role in her practice due to its potential to create fictions and reveal the fictional side of reality. The structure of tales and myths is very present in her work, giving birth to stories where she questions social, economic and political constructs of power.
After having explored
different expanded forms of narratives—such as a browser-choreography about
her lover, an ethnographic-mockumentary about her family, a storytelling-scenography about her job and some movie-performances—she has focused on making ultra-narrative, epic and colourful but allways politically engaged films and video-installations, often working with amateur performers and actresses.
This combination of acute, bright visceral colours and its poignant exploration of identity and technology is present in her installations by means of using textiles, foam, plastic or giving a second chance to waste and leftover materials. She also likes to play with the physical form of moving image, using multiple video channels or embedded screens into furniture.
That way,
she creates situations in which everyday objects are altered or detached from their natural function. By establishing unexpected thematic liaisons, Maria creates site-specific artworks where the personal and political intertwines, prompting the viewer to question their own social position.