Marisa Gonz lez

Critical text

Spanish artist Marisa Gonz lez (b. 1943, Bilbao) has been a pioneer in the use of new technologies since the 1970s. After an MA at the Generative System Department of the School of the Art Institute in Chicago founded by Sonia Sheridan Gonz lez continued her studies at the Corcoran School for Art and Design in Washington under the guidance of feminist pioneer Mary Beth Edelson. In those years, she developed the photographic series Violencia Mujer (1975 76), investigating violence against women as well as honing a keen interest in recycling and ecological thinking. Starting from the photocopier, the artist has consistently explored the creative potential of fast-changing technologies, including video, fax machines and early digital-editing tools. Such tools appealed to her because of their communication potential and their inherent ability to distort, degrade, accumulate, and distribute information across a new society that depends exponentially more and more on such fluxes. In the series presented at Artissima, La Descarga (1975 77), Gonz lez reuses images from Violencia Mujer, which depicted the restaging in a feminist workshop with colleagues of newspaper photos depicting women suffering from violence in particular under the Pinochet dictatorship. The artist manipulated these photographs using a photocopier and transferred the high contrast black and white images onto acetate thermofax paper. The copies were produced in strips with repeating images and vibrantly coloured monochrome backgrounds, which through their rhythmically pulsating contrasts, contribute to amplifying the sense of brutality and despair.

Text by Francesco Manacorda

The artist’s voice

Common denominators in my creative process are using communication technologies; social- political commitment; the need off accumulation; recycling; and the genre discourse, that cross most of my work