NSYCA Support for Artists Grantee 2024
Maria Fernanda (Mafe) Izaguirre
ARTIST BIO
Maria F. (Mafe) Izaguirre (Caracas, 1978) is a New York-based Venezuelan artist specializing in cybernetics. Her work inquires how humans and technology can cooperate and how this cooperation, as Hybrid Spiritual Systemsā¢, amplifies consciousness.
Izaguirreās thought-provoking propositions offer new perspectives on the human condition. She challenges the traditional view of humans as separate and superior from other species and machines. She believes that the humans of our time are hybrid entities, interconnected with multiple beings, agents, and systems whose identities are shaped by their interactions and exchanges. Izaguirreās work reminds us that we are an ever-evolving universal, entangled, and vibratory organism.
ARTIST STATMENT
” In 2022, I created the Postpoetic Machineā¢, a device that explores vibration as universal language. I use this machine to challenge the limits of human language and radically experience otherness. I collect and transcribe fragments of human and non-human voices, then compose them into unrestricted spatiotemporal and metatextual realities.In this project, I am exploring pre-linguistic patterns understood and mediated by a human-machine hybrid language. I set on the horizon of possibilities willing to expand myself into an open and endlessly flowing existential abyss.“
ABOUT THE WORK
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The Postpoetic Machine is an immersive cybernetic art installation that delves into the evolving relationship between humans, machines, and language.
Set within a hybrid landscape, audiences are invited to challenge traditional boundaries of communication, exploring interspecies and human-machine dialogue. Featuring collaborations with guest artists Enrique Enriquez, Peter Sciscioli, and Yoko Murakami, the installation offers a series of participatory cybernetic and poetic experiences designed to expand human cognitive capabilities and probe the implications of technological assimilation.
The exhibit, featuring the titular Postpoetic Machine and other interactive objects ā created from scratch by Izaguirre, who came up with the concepts, researched, built, and programmed the electronic components, and wrote some of the poetry featured in the show ā provides a thought-provoking experience of exploring our evolving hybridization process with machines. This exhibition is a testament to the artistās ongoing investigation into the posthuman condition and the future of human-machine communication, offering speculative scenarios that propel us into new existential horizons.
The show is complemented by four experimental performance sessions with Mafe Izaguirre and the guest artists. Audiences are encouraged to participate, expand their consciousness, and reflect on the implications of a posthuman future.
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ARTIST’S WORK AT THEATERLAB
2024 NYSCA GRANTEES
