Feliza Bursztyn: Welding Madness

Seen as a great artist in Colombia, elsewhere Bursztyn has remained relatively unknown. The publication is a comprehensive survey on pioneering art practice of Bursztyn and seeks to reflect on and animate new tendencies in research on Feliza Bursztyn and her vibrant body of work. It features texts by prominent writers, researchers and curators – Julia Buenaventura, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Camilo Leyva, Daniel Muzyczuk, Lucas Ospina, Sylvia Suárez, Gina McDaniel Tarver, Lynn Zelevansky – and rarely published archive materials.

The publication inaugurates the Muzeum Susch and Skira Editore’s series dedicated to re-discovering women artists overlooked by the main canons of art history. A pioneer in kinetic sculpture, Feliza Bursztyn (1933, Bogota–1982, Paris) created wrecked metal sculptures with ghostlike yet comical humanoid traits that addressed the social effects caused by the aggressive modernization of Colombian society. Composed of industrial junk, often motor-animated, these works perform a theater of dystopian industrial hybrids. Bursztyn’s immersive installations are characterized by their disconcerting mechanical sound produced by the frenetic vibration of the sculptures, as well as by occasional music scores accompanying the pieces. The artist’s works and sculptural mise-en-scènes enact sites of aesthetic resistance and antithetical political investment, creating a unique experience that raises awareness on the situation and the perception of women in a male-dominated society and reveal the troublesome face of modernity.