Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo
Cuban artist Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo (°1984) lives and works alternately in Havana and Karlsruhe. She graduates from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in San Alejandro and the Universidad de las Artes in Guayaquil, and went on to follow a postgraduate study programme at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in 2013.
The core of her oeuvre revolves around the social barriers and psychological menace that individuals - mostly women - encounter and experience when they find themselves on unknown and therefore hazardous terrain, whether or not they were forced into this space. To illustrate these concepts she draws on the Afro-Cuban tradition of Santeria to function as her visual frame of reference. She primarily works with photography and video installations to produce powerful, jarring visual images that always teeter on the edge of the morally acceptable. Her work is incredibly intriguing precisely because of her fearless approach to menacing situations in which she frequently positions herself as a victim; moreover, Matienzo takes no steps to shun subjecting her own body to affliction. This is something she physically exemplifies in her decision to conceive a child in 2007 with the help of an anonymous donor. In this way she experiences the cycle of life and death − inherent to every sperm cell − as a scientific artistic process. After 48 days, this process is brought to its end in a miscarriage, which she calls The Scandal of the Real. This project leads to a documentary ensemble, which assembles all the scientific facts, photographs and details of her medical examinations touching upon this personally traumatic experiment.
Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo's inner artist knows no bounds, with no subject too sacred or taboo. She relentlessly looks the obstacles of life hard in the eye and transforms these into compelling images that captivates the viewer's gaze.