Sema D'Acosta "Musitar" exhibition Laura Segura
All the works of Laura Segura Gómez (Pedrera, Seville, 1985) contain something undeniably sensitive and close. In front of them, we always find an indecipherable bond that is familiar to us. His work is not easy to limit, it has an organic beauty related to the living and changing of the drives of the field, between the animal and the vegetable, between the recognizable and the uncertain. His creations take us to an indefinite zone of memories that we can link with childhood, maternal warmth or rural labors, especially those associated with crafts and shelter where insects, mammals or birds inhabit. According to his own perception of what surrounds us, the environment in which we find ourselves is not an abstract image nor should it be valued from theoretical conjectures, but from the concrete and tangible as any integral element of nature. Sometimes tactile, sometimes smelly, sometimes harsh, but assuming the value of that empirical that we can establish or perceive for ourselves. To understand his pieces, it is essential to see them live, feel them closely. In that sense, his work links with the approaches of the English philosopher John Locke, whose main thesis was that true knowledge focuses on our experience of the world; not on reality itself, but on how we experience it, an affirmation that puts experiential and moves away from the epistemological precepts that are based on the speculation of ideas, a wide indeterminate and gaseous surface -more common than it seems in contemporary art-, than it forgets.
The first solo exhibition of Laura Segura Gomez on Marquesa Gallery shows a relevant selection of his latest works. Almost all of them are made in the last two years, although we also find some previous ones. In general, the tone is suggestive, the pieces speak quietly, captivate us by their imprecise condition and the attractive haptic sense of the natural materials used: wool, wood, silk, soap, fibers, pigments, metal, glass, wax or cotton. They are not only designed for the eyes, smell or tactile aspects, they also contribute; even some can be touched with the hands. His works should not be interpreted simply as aesthetic objects, they possess experiential nuances. Observed with attention, we do not know how to decipher clearly what meanings they contain, a quality that enlivens the imagination of the viewer and makes him a participant in his worldology, which mixes without distinction considerations around the attentive contemplation of the landscape in the context of a small town in the south, the interior listening of the body itself or personal interpretations of spirituality. In fact, she reads a lot about different world religions or mystical thought and some pieces are inspired, for example, by the prayer wheels of Buddhist temples, rotating cylinders that serve to release prayers (Ommmmmm, 2026). In her case, being made of soap and wood, there is something that disables her as an instrument of worship and takes her to a more allegorical territory. Soap is associated with water and cleanliness, with ablutions and preparation for a state of approach to the divine. The same goes for the great installation entitled Kundal (2026), an abstract snake understood as a symbol of rebirth and transformation, as latent energy that lies coiled inside us; an organic sculpture that, in some way, represents the vitality/creativity binomial, intrinsic to its way of being.
The process is an essential axis of his proposals. It takes a long time for each production. In his work there are no rhetoric or telechies or rumblings, his pieces are made with his hands, accumulating time and dedication. Each of them plunges her into a kind of monotonous litany, a state of concentration close to introspection. That inside look brings Laura’s work closer to the many women who, generation after generation, were weaving at home as they supported the family. Often invisible, they have been the ones who have led community care, taking that sacrifice with pride so that their daughters and sons could progress. Also with the artisans who meticulously maintained in the native contexts the traditions of good work taking advantage of local resources. The fragility of these works is their strength, as can be seen in Los mil pétalos (2025), where the clay and wool scales serve at the same time as a protective layer and suggestive surface. The work reminds us of a pangolin or armadillo, whose armor serves as a shield against predators and allows you to incorporate a protection that gives you security to operate without fear of the ecosystem. They are slow, patient works, which facilitate reflection during their preparation. The head is activated by feeling with the fingers the friction of the materials, which are coupled to a form following a structure, as happens with the tessellations that we find in infinity of natural patterns such as the honeycombs of the bees, an insect with which the artist feels particularly identified. The delicate frieze 13o (2026), made of porcelain and glass, or the hanging piece Shambhala (2024), refers us to their hives, the places where they live. Also, the work Oro-Péndola (2024) we associate with the hanging bags where the orioles are raised; here, the inspiration in the habitat of this bird of characteristic plumage is undoubted. The body itself as a house, the shell or the nest take us to the poetics of the space of Gaston Bachelard and the primitive consciousness of the refuge as a dwelling.
When contemplating the set of works, we realize that Segura Gómez eludes spectacular arguments and flees from grandiloquence; what is hers is whispering, whispering in short distances, establishing intimacy relationships. Above any Cartesian approach, his work is intuitive, superimposing art and life. Undoubtedly, it moves away from the watertight compartments that promote the fine arts to focus on people and their ways of linking with that is not known how indecipherable that connects us with the earth and the beings that populate it. Implicitly, the exhibition revolves around the primitive and the most elementary links that we still maintain with the natural environment. Their work makes us participants in an approach to the rural, they take us away from the urban, giving up any technological glimmer to claim the manual. Their motivations stem from wide universes that are identified with both popular and intellectual culture. Those nods are rarely explicit, in several of the titles you can trace their provenance, which can come from the humanities or science, their sources are heterogeneous. For example: Unwrapped from the Wrapper is a poem by Walt Whitman present in Leaves of Grass. Or the 13 ° refers to the precise angle of the cells so that the honey does not fall. Soft areas woven with knots, spiral tapestries, crochet extensions, shapes that fall from the ceiling, woods that resemble tools or textured skins that we recognize. All in all, a kind of sculpture-landscape body that turns the visit to the room into a multisensory walk where in addition to the suggestive dyed fabrics that we notice, reds predominate, other sensations can be perceived beyond the visuals.
The mystery persists in us. Fortunately, human beings are a complex web of uncontrollable circumstances that are not based solely on reason. Abrupt scientism reduces feelings down to measurable chemical reactions; it is able to abbreviate the natural world to what a zoo or botanical garden means. We need to look at our situation in the middle. It is necessary to enhance the more intuitive hemisphere of the brain, the less analytical, so that the less structured and more sensitive version of people emerges freely, a facet now abandoned by excessive confidence in progress and in new technologies, inevitable advances that allow us (apparently) to increase in comfort and quality of life, but that subtract transcendental values, indefinable qualities of existence that are the intangible source of the art that feeds. In times of uncertainty, the field offers certainties. Going back to walk the roads means meeting who we are, going to the village to find the germ, observing the animals and plants. Stop to chat with someone, listen to the wind, look at the water of a stream, feel the wet grass of the morning as you walk. For centuries, we were attentive to heaven and earth to understand what the place where we lived was like, we belonged to a context where there was a balance. Today, immersed in a blind flight forward and sheltered on the screens, we have lost the link with our origin. The work of Laura Segura Gomez invites us to connect with the most emotional part of us and get closer to the origin.