Open Source Gallery presents Con su abrigo color Marengo, ni plomo ni negro, a site-specific exhibition by Fabiola Burgos Labra

Poet Gabriela Mistral received the Nobel Prize in 1945. She died in 1957 in New York and her funeral was held in Chile. In both ceremonies, she wore the same Marengo coat, the one that was neither gray nor black.

In Con su abrigo color Marengo, ni plomo ni negro, Fabiola Burgos Labra uses materials such as gift tape and wire mesh to create woven works that respond to the space of the gallery. The materials become a renewed method of textile production, while simultaneously distancing themselves from the long tradition of bodily protection and extension. These textiles are not warm and cozy, they are crafted to be what they are: surfaces open to the changes of light, textures that one feels with the eyes, colors and patterns that simultaneously content history and hint toward a different kind of future. Fabiola’s textiles are a vehicle to communicate different ways of articulating the same medium.

Cylindrical towers are an instrument for measuring the exhibition space, while also expanding it. Fabiola’s modular works grow exponentially, interacting and dialoguing with their environment in different ways, from the subtle to the monumental, the static to the dynamic. These towers activate the space by becoming marks, totems, and lines of color that play against the (dis)order of the rural and urban. Meanwhile, Burgos’s flat fabrics contain variations of the same design, accounting for organized and contained space, pointing toward the history of textiles taking us from a space of brightness and saturation to one of black on black. Finally, branches of fallen trees that are almost seamlessly reconstructed soaring to create a space of freedom in contrast to the weight of mathematics.

Fabiola Burgos Labra was born in Osorno, Chile, 1984. She graduated from Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, and received her MFA from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She has been resident at R.A.T (México City, México), Materia Gris (La Paz, Bolivia) and Balmaceda Arte Joven (Santiago, Chile). She has also developed public art projects in places such as Mercado La Vega Central in Santiago (CL), Mercado La Merced in Ciudad de México (MX), and Feria El Alto in La Paz (BO). In Chile her work has been exhibited at Galería Gabriela Mistral, Matucana 100, Galería Macchina, Galería Balmaceda 1215, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Universidad de Chile, Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Cerrillos, Local 2702 ARCIS, and Local Arte Contemporáneo. Internationally she has exhibited at La Alianza Francesa in Managua (NI), Diablo Rosso in Ciudad de Panamá (PA), Bikini Wax in Ciudad de México (MX). During 2022-2023 Fabiola will participate in HISK studio program in Ghent, Belgium.