Marina Daiez’s pictorial world reclaims fantasy but is nourished by the real. Her hyperactive artistic practice includes community projects such as the creation of neighborhood gardens, the publication of artists’ books in her low-cost publishing house El Dije, her work in hospitals generating activities to rehabilitate and heal, among other projects that excite her and root her in different groups of people. These connections nourish her work; in her oil paintings on canvas translucent beings, between humans and dragonflies, merge with natural environments, figures and backgrounds participate in the same intertwined energy. Imagination, for this young artist, is the resource of the moment to project better worlds that embrace and contain us.

“This is the story of our world, whose myth of origin is that of a folded world. It is born dual, sustained by two sisters, reality and fiction. While the former seems to be the axis that controls the everyday, the latter is usually further ahead to lead the way,” writes curator Javier Villa, reflecting on Marina Daiez’s work. He continues: “Art has the privilege of being the most important bridge between the two sisters, and materiality is that magical veil that turns fictions into concrete things…No one would dare to argue that painting is a political act, what happens is that sometimes the political is often confused with the ideological. Painting is not a purge or an evasion, but a dispenser of fiction to generate well-being. The experience and perception of the creative instant generate joy in the face of a world plagued by fears.”

Daiez is a painter who has the privilege of having found her own language from a very young age. She moves between two extreme color palettes: pastels, which are nothing more than modulations of white, and deep tones such as blues and blacks. The use of pastel colors allows her to flow. She explains that when it comes to this range of variations of white, the slightest change or addition generates an enhanced effect. The result is the luminescence of these works, which provokes a twinkling of the eye, reinforcing their magical atmosphere.

In the show there is a prolific and playful series of paintings that are transformed into high reliefs made with a technique devised by Daiez. The artist collects elements found in the urban or natural environment and incorporates them into the surface, then coats and homogenizes it with a mixture of putty and finally paints it with oil.

Crowning the first floor room, a large work of a luminescent ombú, a tree native to the local pampas. In the artist’s words “this is the most Argentine painting“. A detailed, magical and idealized version of this natural symbol of the country that could be read as a luminous wish for our shared future. The ombú is a tree used for resting in its shade and not for productive purposes since its wood is hollow, the artist is interested in the reference to the social potential of leisure.

In addition to the paintings, the exhibition includes objects destined for the visitors’ bodies: the hammock that welcomes and restores, the underground staircase that climbs to imaginary places, the poufs/characters. This performative instance by the public, which potentially modifies each person’s experience of the exhibition, is central to Daiez’s work and relates to her work in providing sensory experiences in different community contexts.

The title of the exhibition is a tribute to her great-aunt, Marguerite Rose Waisse, a specialist in French literature, very close to the art circuit, who worked teaching fantastic literature to teenagers. In her writings, she made an ode to fantasy as a space to imagine new possible worlds. Margarita was disappeared during the military dictatorship. Through the title, Marina Daiez invokes her as genealogy and guardian of her show, “as an ancestor that makes me freer“, in her words.

Marina Daiez was born in Buenos Aires in 1992. She had solo exhibitions at Fundación Cazadores in 2022, after receiving the award granted by this Foundation; at the Mexico City space Biquini Wax (2018); at Centro Cultural Recoleta (2017) and at the Biennial of the Museo de Arte de Bahía Blanca (2017). She participated in group exhibitions at Museo Castagnino MACRO (2022), Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (2022), PROA 21 (2019), Universidad T. Di Tella (2016), MUNAR (2019), among others. In 2021 she was selected for the Central Bank Painting Award, the Klemm Foundation Award, the 8M Award of the CCK, and the Andreani Foundation Award, where she received a prize. In 2018 she participated in artistic residencies at La Verdi Mexico, Atelier Solar Madrid and was awarded a scholarship to study at Bruce High Quality Foundation, New York, USA. Regarding her community work, since 2013 is part of Vergel, a non-profit palliative treatment project; she participated in the foundation of La Cuevita neighborhood garden and since 2022 she collaborates in the leisure and free time room of Rocca Hospital for Psychophysical Rehabilitation. She is a member of the Art and Health Study Group.