EXHIBITION ESSAY

INTRICATE LOVELINESS

Marthe Aponte is known for her masterful use of picoté, a painstaking and meditative process in which she repeatedly punctures paper to make artworks of tiny holes. Often embellished with beads, sequins, shells, and stitching, her resulting patterns are suggestive of embroidery and needlepoint. An Aponte is reminiscent of the intricate loveliness of vintage tablecloths or sumptuous brocaded wedding dresses paired with the profundity of the sacred. They are beautiful in their decorative attributes, but are more akin to religious paintings where earth, nature and womanhood are celebrated and worshiped. Botanical forms, representations of lace and flowers, natural elements such as the wind and the sun, alongside the female body emerge from the accumulation of these apertures. Feminine torsos entwined with tree trunks, branches and roots convey an inherent bond between women and nature that is both earthy and mystical.

A connection can be made between Aponte’s approach to art-making with pointillism, the painting technique developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac during the 19th century. She immerses herself in a repetition of dots to create images, but departs from the 2-dimensional surface of traditional pointillist painting. Her piercings create embossed, textured shapes, extending the picture plane outwards. The viewer is also aware of another plane that exists through the perforations. Further deviating from pointillism, her iconography aligns with the paintings of Transcendental artists like Agnes Pelton. Aponte and Pelton share a visionary power to express the spiritual essence that permeates and activates our physical realm.

Aponte’s interest in spirituality continues here with her Black Shield series. The potential of the picoté art method is expanded with the addition of backlit boxes. Intended as psychic protective devices, light shines through the pinholes within black discs enriched with white or neutral colored beads. The proliferation of illuminated tiny dots leads us to introspection as well as to the outer limits of consciousness. One has the experience of simultaneously confronting and entering the universe. Ultimately, when gazing at Aponte’s work, we are witnessing a birthing of life and resilience from something that is seemingly delicate, yet strong in its power to elicit a sense of connection, hope, beauty, and a glimpse of the creative force itself.

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Leigh Salgado