No Hay Salida

Brief description: The work is filled with paths that lead to no exit, drawing on the concept of a labyrinth to invite the viewer to feel trapped.

Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual development

Inspired by the work of Lillian Schwartz, a pioneer of digital art in the 1960s and 1970s, I found and drew from her pieces that claustrophobic feeling that had been weighing on me lately, full of geometric shapes — specifically cubes that link together as if caught in a web made of code.

My intention was to capture those shortcuts that seem to lead nowhere, working the background with vertex, building the labyrinth with quad and line, and relying on translate and variables to bring it to life, to make the figure breathe within all the enclosed space I was trying to generate. I also chose simple shapes like circles that seek their way out through that whole system.

The presence of shapes trying to escape, hitting against the screen, unaware of each other’s existence, reflects part of my mental chaos today — the constant cycle between staying in and escaping those spaces that generate discomfort.

This connects to José Luis Brea’s ideas about how traditional notions of author, work, and artist have become obsolete, replaced by a logic of immaterial production and circulation. He argues that the artist must move away from creating physical pieces to instead generate situations, narratives, and mediations within a public and digital space. Brea speaks of all the electronic art media that have “died,” as their technological evolution has advanced faster than language itself — by the time we find the right term for a given technology, its existence is already threatened by something more modern. It is very easy to be replaced; today’s culture of consumption swallows us up so quickly that we feel this constant need to produce, to offer something of high material value, or to generate status. There are no longer “artists,” only producers.

What I want to convey through my work is that feeling that time is borrowed, constantly running toward a goal, searching for a quick, safe, and successful way out — unaware that it’s not just one person who feels this way, but all of us.

Bibliography

• Brea, J. L. (2002). Breve y desordenado antiglosario o diccionario de tópicos sobre el arte electrónico.
• Brea, J. L. (2008). Redefinición de las prácticas artísticas (s. 21).

Brief resume

Melina is 25 years old and spent most of her life in Lanús, in Buenos Aires province. After finishing high school, she decided to study Audiovisual Arts at UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes).

Over the past three years, she chose to become independent and moved to the City of Buenos Aires, working occasionally at events and taking small programming courses, which led her to decide to change her career path. She is currently in her first year of Multimedia Arts at the same university.