This transformation has its origins in pure curiosity. Deprived from any determining agenda, at least a conscious one, it aims to uncover ideas and metaphors inhabiting objects. Understood as an echo of an inherent knowledge, Fonseca makes use of them to communicate her thoughts and reflections on her connection and gaze to the world around her. The resulting metamorphosis can be contextualized in a surrealist aesthetic. The Cuban artist defends the quality of absurd as the most genuine way of representation, and thus, the closest to the truth of ideas.

‘Objects completely deprived from the function they were created for are more beautiful. They seem unreal compare to the practical ones. They belong to the world of the irrational, that is, closer to the heart than to the mind. They are inherently beautiful. What is unreasonable becomes absurd. Words abandon us and only our eyes can speak’, claims Fonseca.

Opposite concepts are questioned through being confronted and this exercise serves to inspire several works. This is the case for El peso de la inconsistencia (the weight of inconsistence) which presents how lightness may become dense and heavy. The same happens with El ciclo de la estática, (The static cycle) that reflects about the inmovilism of cyclic movements. An assemblage of scissors becomes useless by being weld to each other forming a circle with no beginning and no end. As for Esquema Poético de un gesto repetido (Poetic Diagram of repetitive gesture), paper plays tricks on the viewer’s eye through delicate folds and drawings that grant a dynamic nature to a static object. The same game of perception is placed with La espontaneidad del límite (the spontaneity of the limit). Finally at Ridícula Libertad (Ridiculous Freedom) Here Fonseca confronts freedom’s stereotypical definition with that its true deep meaning, which paradoxically requires limits. These are necessary guidelines to achieve this true state if freedom.

 

Conflict and friction management between antagonistic positions is another big topic the show. There are several artworks that address it. For instance, Tregua (truce), presents two sandpapers rolls that are connected right in the middle point. Here the surface has smoothed down as if tensions had been solved. Uncertainty may also be a problematic source of tension specially when involves our present and future self. This precisely is the center argument of Una vez no es otra vez  (Once is not once again) and Explosión Implosión (Explosion-Implosion). Likewise, El libro de la discordia (The book of discord) is a representation of disagreement as an intrinsic phenomenon to human nature.

Finally Fonseca poses a critique to human impact on nature with Mundo Pacífico (Pacific world). This piece is a collage intervention of a terrestrial globe where land is erased and there is only water. The sculpture proposes the existence of a world with no people or countries.

Diana Fonseca lives and works between Habana and Madrid. Her work has been individually shown at the Brownstone Foundation, Paris; Sean Kelly Gallery, New York; and Factoría Habana; among others. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Cranbrook Art Museum of Michigan; the XIII Habana Bienal, Stravos Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Atenas, CAB Art Center, Brussels. Perez Art Museum, Foundation Jean Boghosian, Kadist Foundation, Margulies Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art of North Carolina, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts are some of the institutions that have acquired her pieces