Manuela Zárate (1994, San Fernando). She currently lives and works in Caracas.
“The current ceramic proposal of Manuela Zarate (1994) is conceived from narratives and stories that trace new formal configurations, which problematize and question recurring arguments of Venezuelan social culture: popular icons, human stereotypes, identity, history and territory, seen from a particular point of view. His work goes beyond the limits of the material to become sculptural objects of immense expressiveness and bizarre aesthetics; in each approach, humor and satire are translated into a system of symbolic signifiers that make his work a singular project. The archive of images and representations accumulated by his meticulous research and an overflowing curiosity are imprinted in his subconscious to manifest themselves in new formal strategies and thematic contents, now affected by an uncertain present. Like any work that transcends, his emerges ingeniously as a political manifesto and a critical stance to his environment and neocolonialist demonstrations.
Since his academic experience and later in his first solo show, El guiso (Abra Caracas, 2021), his approach shows a special interest in exploring the primitive Latin American civilizations, the influence of the conquest and the foundational discourses of the new world in contemporary Venezuelan culture. She thus configures an inquiry that, from her perspective, reviews and examines transversal themes about our imaginary of wealth, Caribbean exuberance and wild territory. “The research,” comments Manuela, ”has led me to create a relationship of multiple symbolic and plastic resources to develop proposals that reflect on the complex cultural hybridizations and the challenges that these imply for the development of our countries, communities, families and individualities.”
Ruth Auerbach