LUCIA HIERRO

Lucia Hierro (b. 1987) is a Dominican American conceptual artist born and raised in New York City, and currently based in the South Bronx. Her works reside in the collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the JP Morgan & Chase Collection and the Progressive Art Collection among others, as well as in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum, New York .

The M means metaphysical: as in, the metaphysical subtleties inherent to a commodity, as outlined in the first chapter of Capital. The socialist understands this M, as does anyone who has ever stood slack-jawed before rows and rows of stuff. Lucia knows this, too—her practice is full of oversized totems of commercial goods one might get from the corner store. In her hands, these impersonal products unfold into multivalent monuments of specific memory, communal kinship, and social signification. Look at Mama’s Nightstand (Redux): here is an entire life—even a way of life— contained in a smattering of things.

This M is eternal and interchangeable, always there but no different than any other company’s uppercase array. It is a shared site of meaning without any cultural specificity, a signifier of supply chains and mass production, a non-place placeholder of a postindustrial society dotted with the same fungal network of chain restaurants and fast fashion retailers. This M might be the only thing that truly connects us, Lucia seems to suggest. It is the total reduction of connectivity, of specificity, indeed of identity, to the shining shape of commerce.

Press release courtesy Fabienne Levy, Lausanne. Excerpts of text by Justin Kamp.