Diana Sofia Lozano: Sculpture MFA '21

I encounter Diana Sofia Lozano’s work in our present moment, which is dominated by virality.

The fear of viral matter—in the air, in the grocery store, in our friends—and the unknowability of its spread make us retreat into isolated spaces. There is worthwhile safety in this antiseptic seclusion, although it is lonely. In our viral age, luxury is not only decadence but the ability to distance oneself from dirt.

Lozano asks us to reconsider the ethics of dirt, of seepage, of slime, fluid, and rot. Where her work resides, in the botanical world, luxury and dirt are not antonyms. Braided armatures of hardened steel are woven through with mossy and dreaded wools. Sifted on the ground is a residue that conjures sweet pollen the color of honeysuckle; in a different light, it takes on the harshness of sulfur. Suspended at the tips of the sculpture’s steel arms are open boats—“pods”—that carry pollinic forms and an unknown, unctuous substance that smells of piña colada and garden dirt, like sick earth. Here is a sticky deliverance, an offering...

Continue reading >>

Text by Josie Roland Hodson