The magical world, human expression and nature guide the work of Karima Muyaes

The painter Karima Muyaes grew up surrounded by works by great artists, Mexican masks, engravings by José Guadalupe Posada, antiques and other mysterious and intriguing objects. That atmosphere will be recreated in Karima Muyaes: An objective biography, exhibition organized by the Vlady Center that, in addition to making known his family environment, will cover the periods of his artistic career of more than four decades.

Apart from showing 70 works by Muyaes, including engraving, painting, drawing and object art, as well as many others by figures such as Pablo Picasso, Rufino Tamayo, Max Ernst, Posada, Francisco Toledo, Manuel Felguérez, Hugo Velázquez and Jorge Wilmot, corners of his family home in Azcapotzalco will be recreated, as well as the Bazar Sábado, in San Ángel, since his parents were among its founders in 1960, whose premises his daughter maintains to this day.

“They already took the room, the easel, the glasses,” says the speaker jokingly when referring to the moves carried out to move the furniture and countless objects to the space of the Insurgentes Mixcoac neighborhood.

The idea of ​​the exhibition is to show why Muyaes paints what he paints. Where does it come from? His parents, the anthropologist and artist Jaled Muyaes (1921-2007) and the educator Estela Ogazón (1925-2009) gathered a collection of around 4 thousand masks during their lifetime. Karima acknowledges that these have had “an influence on my work, not consciously, because I couldn’t escape it.” Although he clarifies having carved out an independent path, in search of his own expression.

The exhibition includes, for example, a recent lithograph of hers that “interprets” an African mask that she has at home, since it aims to show the extent to which her works have to do with the objects that surround her.

All symbols come together

Where has the expression of your painting gone? With studies at the University of the Americas, when an art program was taught in a building in the Zona Rosa, then at the School of Art in Toronto, Canada – with an emphasis on engraving and lithography -, Muyaes answers: “since I started working I have been moved by human contact, as well as the relationship with the earth and with the inner animal life that each of us instinctively has within us. I create characters between animals and humans that interact with universal symbols that can be pre-Hispanic, African, Middle Eastern or Indonesian. They are all the same symbols that cultures have worshiped; for example, the spiral.

“I have realized, with the passage of time, that my work has been very instinctive, as if in search of the shamanic meaning in art. Not only visually, but the work I produce can provide that energy that universal symbols bring in an ancestral way. A type of graphic DNA, with an intention of intuition. Obviously, I am very graphic, because I am fascinated by this medium. I love the human body and the nude. Line drawings, like Picasso or Matisse, have always fascinated me. Without However, my work is based on that control of the shape of the human body and how I can combine it with these animals and shamanic beings that surround us, with color.”

He continues: “I have dabbled in many techniques. I am very experimental. Since I started doing graphics I always experiment with techniques. My work has always been figurative, but mixed with abstractions, although I have had more expressionist moments, more cubist or tribal with very sensual drawings. My work has always been very intuitive and personal, with many emotions and human expressions.”

He also has pieces with a “social sense”, related to the moment in which he lives, but with their own essence.

“I have tried to be me because that’s how I am, although then I say: ‘now I’m going to be more minimalist, use less color’, but I can’t. The exuberance comes out again. I can’t control the horror of emptiness. I really like this magical, intangible world of energies, nature, of human expression, looks, of how people can heal with harmony.”

His main interest is the human condition, Muyaes reiterates, as well as the nature of primal things. “That thing that we all have inside, that is so simple, but complex. It is something that has remained throughout all these years.”

The exhibition Karima Muyaes: An objective biography It will be inaugurated on March 19 at 7 p.m. at the Vlady Center (Goya 63, Insurgentes Mixcoac neighborhood).