Mariela Garibay

GARIBAY (Lima, Peru 1976) is a graduate in sculpture of the University of Peru (PUCP) and in urban design of the University ofBarcelona.

She is granted twice the Winternitz prize in 1997 and 1999 and won the first prize of the national drawing contest in 2005. Her first solo show was in 2004 with stone as first material.

She has realized several state commissions in Peru, taught at the Fine Arts School of Ayacucho and PUCP. She has been developing her bronze technique, and exhibiting her sculptures permanently in art galleries. Mariela tells us that the sculpture is not only shape, but the language the artist chose to communicate and the result of a work of preliminaryinteriorization on the message which she passes on. The sculpture is a discipline which requires some patience, many hours of work and love.

Love for the idea, the work, the message and the unknown person who one day will discover it. This is essential to the success of the work. It can last months between the elaboration of a drawing and the realization of the sculpture. The sculpture is a slow but sure process. “All the hours of reflection, maturation, work and given love, make me aware of the value of things", the artist confesses.

Her sculpture is figurative but not realistic; Mariela Garibay observes the world around her and transcribes it with a lot of tenderness through childish characters. The sculpture of Mariela Garibay is positive and generous, it immortalizes a moment of happiness seized by the artist, a peace moment, a good memory, a smile, a surprise, a simple and sincere enjoyment.

I want to perceive art as a vocation at the service of good, capable, through our sensitivity, of lifting our spirit, of enlightening our path. The value of art is that it can still cause wonder in our souls, an awe similar to the one we experience as children when we're discovering the world. In this sense, art has the capacity to excite us, and therefore give back our desire to live and enjoy the beauty that surrounds us.

The characters I make — with their smooth surfaces and rounded shapes, generally very elaborate — are the pretext for creating a simple and direct language with an interplay of volumes and balances.

With this language, I highlight the need for an inner gaze, silence, serenity, patience, tenderness, trust, etc.; feelings that unite us all. I often resort to feelings from my childhood: naïvety, surprise, wonder, absolute confidence, the desire to fly or run, to hold out my arms to feel the wind and the rain, to lie down to rest in the sun and close my eyes to simply breathe and dream. I also tackle a lot of topics about family being at the centre of experiences of love.

We all need bridges that take us to places where we can rest our eyes and discover images that remind us that we were created to love, that it is possible to trust, and that at some point we felt blind confidence and an unalterable peace, even if it was only in our earliest childhood. Everything that is in our heart is still there, waiting for us, waiting for us to stop, internalise, quiet our mind and find that place within ourselves where everything makes sense. I like to think that my work can be a bridge to that place, at least for an instant.