Due to COVID-19, Carrie Secrist Gallery is currently only open by appointment through March 28. Stay tuned for more information about our upcoming exhibition – Diana Guerrero-Maciá’s: The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married.

The idiom “The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married” is a Cuban folkloric saying also found in cultures around the world and one that was told to Guerrero-Maciá many times by her parents growing up. It refers to what is more commonly known as a sunshower, or when the sun is shining simultaneously with falling rain with the added potential for a rainbow. These seemingly naturally formed disparate conditions – sun, rain, rainbow – in concert with each other, metaphorically emphasize that opposing conditions can be complicated but beautiful results can be had.

The paintings on view in The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married continue Guerrero-Maciá’s investigation into claiming space within the expanded field of painting while revealing the complex socio-economic histories textiles bring into an object. Challenging these qualifications are eight artworks constructed from hand-dyed canvas and upcycled textiles. The materials that make up the medium include hand-sewn cutter-quilts, US Army blankets, wool jackets, suits and dresses which are deconstructed, flattened and stitched by hand on to raw canvas. The materiality of these paintings may appear immediate, but they are meant to consciously unfold over a long period of time, highlighting the craft-oriented practice of Guerrero-Maciá. The delicacy derived from the act of slow-making balance the composition and reveal how the colors and shapes emerge over time.

Time, in all its expansiveness and elusiveness, is integral to this body of work. Each of the eight paintings represent a decade of time that courier as mnemonic devices. The title of each painting is used to point to a certain feeling, time and place while leaving them open to interpretation. For example, the painting Born in the Sixties emotes the controversial yet optimistic ideologies of that decade while visually referring to Sister Corita Kent and Buckminster Fuller and being suggestive of the central placement of the Virgin in Spanish Colonial paintings. Italian Summer conjures the 1980’s with its classical geometry of a black & white tiled floor or Neo-classicism meets Super-graphic pop along with the sensitivity of an Aperol or Campari spritz.

The essence of the work on view in The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married is autobiographical, yet its dynamic approach to visual literacy allows for interpretations. Here, the dichotomy of conditions, from which time becomes the only course of regularity in an otherwise abstract moment, highlights differences. The rich complexities that arise when these forces meet, much like the intangibility of rainbows, make life better.

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Tags: Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, COVID-19, Diana Guerrero-Maciá, near west side, Postponed, The Devil's Daughter is Getting Married