ARCO Madrid
Mónica Mays  (solo booth)

6 – 10 March 2024  | Ifema Madrid | Booth 9OP10

In her project titlted «Shadow Boxes», Mónica Mays aimes to cultivate and examine forms of reproduction beyond patriarchal structures, industrial production methods, and the inherent violence perpetuated by these systems. She delves into these concepts by closely studying the life cycle of the bombyx mori silk moth—an organic process brutally altered by human intervention, domestication, and industrialization. To extract silk threads for textile use, silk moth cocoons undergo steaming to kill the grub inside before it hatches, while those moths allowed to hatch typically breed and perish shortly thereafter; millennia of production-centric domestication have left the moth blind, albino, and flightless, with a vestigial mouth incapable of feeding. For Mays, the silk moth cocoon holds numerous semiotic and biological significances, symbolizing both extractive violence, biopower, and heteropessimism, as well as the potential for disrupting linear logics, rejecting reproduction, and embracing mutation.