"A space does not exist except through the relationships we establish with it. Its form does not depend on “given,” material elements that are truthful and irrefutable. Let us not be deceived. Everything around us—even these walls, this staircase, these columns—is nothing more than the way our bodies relate to them: how they outline our expectations and gradually shape our illusions. They are an event, something that occurs between them and us, between desire and uncertainty.
More than irrefutable realities, spaces are suspended questions—potential inquiries encoded in their structural codes, which speak of strength, support, tension, and resistance. How do our bodies engage with the elements that sustain and define a space?
Manuela García (Mexico, 1982) is an artist who has devoted her work to relativizing our perception of the physical spaces around us, interrogating their influence—what they elicit in our bodies and, more importantly, how our bodies can act upon them. She has softened, stretched, and repurposed their uses, granting them new realities. She opens, closes, stretches, distorts, autonomously supports, and prolongs their existence through other means, revealing their secret and multifaceted lives—their capacity to challenge our understanding of reality and the solidity of the ground we stand on. (...)"