Ivana Adaime Makac: Sculpting the Boundaries of Domestication
Argentine artist Ivana Adaime Makac’s artistic journey began in Las Flores, Argentina, where she was born in 1978. From a young age, Makac demonstrated an innate fascination with art and pursued formal training at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, delving into art research and earning her DNSEP (Diplôme National Supérieur d’Écoles Professionnelles) from École Supérieure d'Art et Céramique de Tarbes. These formative experiences instilled in her a profound understanding of artistic processes and fueled her ongoing exploration of complex themes—themes that continue to resonate within her distinctive sculptural practice.
Early Influences: Makac cites influences ranging from Surrealist sculpture to the work of Louise Bourgeois, recognizing the power of art to convey emotion and challenge perceptions. These artists served as beacons guiding Makac’s artistic vision, encouraging her to confront societal anxieties through evocative imagery and unconventional forms. Her fascination with Bourgeois's exploration of vulnerability and psychological depth profoundly impacted her approach to representing human experience in her sculptures.
Sculptural Technique: Her artistic practice centers around sculptural mediums—primarily ceramic—allowing her to manipulate form and texture in ways that mirror the processes she investigates. She meticulously crafts pieces using techniques honed through years of dedicated study and experimentation, mastering the subtleties of clay manipulation and glaze application. This dedication to craft ensures that each sculpture embodies a meticulous attention to detail and reflects Makac’s unwavering commitment to artistic excellence.
Conceptual Framework: At the core of Makac’s work lies a conceptual preoccupation with domestication and dis-domestication – not merely as biological terms, but as metaphors for broader societal shifts concerning control, vulnerability, and adaptation. This overarching concept informs her entire oeuvre, prompting her to consider how human interaction with the natural world shapes our identities and perceptions of reality. She seeks to disrupt conventional narratives by presenting unsettling juxtapositions between organic forms and constructed elements—a deliberate strategy designed to provoke contemplation about the precarious balance between civilization and wilderness.
Makac's artistic explorations have garnered recognition through exhibitions showcasing her distinctive style. Notably, ‘Naturalia et Artificialia’ in 2022 presented a compelling dialogue between organic forms and constructed elements, highlighting the artist’s commitment to examining duality. Furthermore, ‘Larmes de Lycurgue,’ held at Les ateliers vortex, solidified her position within the contemporary sculpture landscape. Her work has gained visibility on platforms like Google Arts & Culture, demonstrating a desire to engage with a wider audience and fostering conversations about artistic expression and its role in reflecting cultural anxieties.
Selected Works:
- RééDUCATION
Ivana Adaime Makac’s *Rééducation* is an ongoing project that began in 2009. It is a utopian exploration in which the artist attempts to reverse the domestication of silkworms.
In this work, Adaime Makac gives the worms the opportunity to feed on mulberry leaves that she places around them or, alternatively, to climb a tree or built structure—such as in this studio version—to seek out their food independently.
In the second stage, the artist introduces various structures for the worms to attach their cocoons, allowing them to complete their metamorphosis into butterflies. However, having been domesticated for over 5,000 years, silkworms have lost the ability to fly. One of the utopian aspirations of the piece is to encourage the butterflies to “remember” how to fly again.
The paradox of *Rééducation* is twofold: first, in her attempt to reverse domestication, the artist paradoxically must *assist* the silkworms in their process of rewilding. Second, the timeframe available to accomplish this goal—the average human lifespan—is extraordinarily short compared to the 5,000 years it took for their domestication to occur.
The project is revisited each spring, sometimes within the context of an exhibition and other times in the artist’s studio, as is the case this year.
- Formes Noires
*Formes noires* are sculptural compositions of very pure geometrical forms that stem from remainings of the breeding of silkworms from Ivana Adaime Makac’s ongoing project *Rééducation*. The residues from the process of breeding are carefully kept by the artist as if they were relics from the worms’ existence. The rigid geometrical shapes, conceived as independent modules that can compose different configurations, remind the basic shapes of Giorgio Morandi’s still-life paintings, but…
## Notable Exhibitions
- ‘Naturalia et Artificialia’, 2022
- ‘Larmes de Lycurgue,’ Les ateliers vortex
- Featured on Google Arts & Culture
## Education
2009-2010 MA Art Research, *summa cum laude*, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
2004-2066 MA (DNSEP), *cum laude*, École supérieure d’art des Pyrénées, Tarbes.
1998-2002 BA in Art History, Universidad de Buenos Aires.
## Residencies
- 2017\nLa générale en manufacture, Sèvres, France.
- 2013\nLa chambre Blanche, Québec.
## Selected Works (Continued)
Her use of living beings reflects an interest in cycles, transformation, and the evolving, unfinished nature of forms.
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