Noche de fantasía 2004
The artist has furnished what was once a third-floor bedroom at the Mattress Factory's satellite facility with natural elements.
Description
Glenda León tells stories to construct her own environment. Every discovery is an assemblage of original beauty distilled so as the hide its functionality and make it a willing participant in her extraordinary sensitivity to time and space. In each piece, Glenda undertakes an aesthetic of spiritual construction.
Both Habitat and Noce de fantasía (Night of Fantasy) set up a dialogue between humans and their immediate surroundings, contrasting visual levity and conceptual consistency. Her installations are gifted with a delicate and longing lyricism that seeks poetry and beauty in objects found throughout time. She manages to create an atmosphere which nearly relieves and consoles us, and in which we can hide our memories of the past. Her peaceful settings give the impression of being permanent, immutable; they protect us from the future. She upholds that vital alliance between people and nature.
Habitat and Noce de fantasía offer us a cozy environment — a place to safely express our innermost feelings. These are not scenes from the present; they are presented as a past experienced, a certain past that has survived into the present. They could also be dream spaces of an imagined future. Glenda embellishes our intimacy with a cry of optimism and makes us believe in the possibility of building a place for ourselves. – Magda Ileana González-Mora, Curator
Glenda León received her BA in Art History from the Facultad de Artes y Letras, Universidad de La Habana. She also attended the Academy of Media, Cologne, Germany. She is a visual artist based in La Habana and Madrid. Her work expands from drawing to video art, including installation, objects, and photography. She is interested in interstices between visible and invisible, between sound and silence, between ephemeral and eternal.