MIRIAM MEDREZ

| by Barbara Pavan |

Miriam Medrez was born in Ciudad de México in 1958. After studying Art and Graphic Design at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, she graduated in 1979 in Fine Arts at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (ENAP-UNAM). Fundamental to her development as a sculptor were the courses taught by Gerda Gruber, who imparted not only technical skills in clay manipulation but, more importantly, encouraged her students to regard material as a sculptural artistic language — liberating ceramics from its dependence on two-dimensional imagery and traditional painting.

It was through ceramics, on the other hand, that Medrez learned the primordial chemical process of earth taking shape and gaining texture, much as textiles later taught her the analogy with skin and the importance of the sense of touch.

Since 1985 she has lived in Monterrey, Nuevo León, where she has developed her work as a sculptor and artist. In 1995, the MARCO Museum in Monterrey hosted her solo exhibition “Assault of Memories” (1995) — a uniquely rare event for a local artist. During a sabbatical year in 1997, Medrez moved with her family to Israel, collaborating with the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, where she served as an assistant in the sculpture department at the School of Arts.

The female body has been a constant in Medrez’s artistic practice since the early eighties. In her poetics, it is a vessel for inner transformation through dialogue with its surroundings. Her work stems from personal experience, initially addressing intimate and existential dimensions and later exploring the universal experience of a generation of women whose identities bear the marks of transformations that, by liberating them from a patriarchal model, have opened new territories, roles, and identities — redefining the feminine beyond traditional parameters.

For approximately twenty years, Medrez’s experimentation has shifted towards the textile medium: “I find many analogies between ceramics and textile art, as both require manual dexterity and allow one to ‘feel’ materials emerging from the void. Moreover, one, through fire and the other through thread, transforms its apparent formless fragility into solidity, shape, and strength by the end of the process.”

Textile materials and techniques enable immersive narrative trajectories that evoke ancestral gestures and meanings, while also filtering and distilling reflections on contemporary issues through artistic intervention: mending, suturing, dressing, repairing, wrapping — a vocabulary that enriches and deepens her creative project, in which the female figure is simultaneously singular and manifold, primitive and avant-garde.

“My work,” she explains, “always has a feminine aspect or perspective, involving women or objects associated with us — such as spoons, dresses, chairs, and so on. When I shape clay or cut and fold fabric, I also participate as a woman. We give birth to children — as in all narratives about gods creating human beings from clay — and we ‘mold’ them, raising them to grow as individuals. And through textiles, I feel the special relationship that women have with clothes, our second skin, and with our homes.”

Her work is inspired by the reality that surrounds her. “My works,” she continues, “are born from my everyday experience, from common domestic objects, or from reflections on global news — such as protests or feminist demands — as well as from the exploration of the body and its physiology, and from the many forms of stereotyping of women, as seen in the installation QUIEN SE COMO A QUIEN (2019), for example. I have created works in collaboration with poetesses and writers, crafting a dress-sculpture based on their individual texts — a very powerful personal experience.”

In 2021, Medrez presented NI UNA MENOS, a powerful installation composed of women’s blouse — torn, ripped, or damaged — densely inscribed and smeared with red paint. “This project,” she explains, “addresses the dire situation that women face in Mexico, where they are often victims of abuse and murder, and where perpetrators enjoy impunity. We women feel that our voices are not heard by the authorities, and I believe that now more than ever, NI UNA MENOS should be the outcome of our activism.”

She further expanded her exploration of the body with RESONANCIA ONÍRICA (2022), a multimedia installation featuring thirty fabric ears the size of a face, suspended and appearing and disappearing in rhythm with a composition rich in evocative echoes, subtle notes, and vibrations — creating a sensory, emotional, and meditative experience.

Her interdisciplinary project VÍSTOME PALABRAS ENTRETEJIDAS was exhibited for two years at the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City and subsequently at the Pinacoteca Diego Rivera in Xalapa. In this project, Medrez combines textile sculpture, painting, and literature by presenting 13 dresses created in collaboration with 13 Mexican women writers who reflected on the act of dressing, thus fostering a creative dialogue between the visual and literary arts.

Miriam Medrez’s work has been showcased in countless national and international exhibitions, in institutional venues and private galleries, earning prestigious recognition both at home and abroad. Among her participations are the Hangzhou Fiber Arts Triennial (2019), Contextile2014 in Portugal — where she won the Acquisition Award — and the World of Threads Festival in Ontario, Canada. Her works are included in the permanent public collections of the UDLAP Art Collection in Puebla, the MARCO Museum in Monterrey, Casa Candina in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Keramik Grimeerhaus Museum in Denmark, the Jingdezhen Ceramic Cultural Center in China, and the MuRTAC Museum of Embroidery and Ancient and Contemporary Textiles in Valtopina, Italy, to name just a few.