Zoraida Anaya

Untitled

This installation is arranged on the floor. At its center lies a worn, off-white corset positioned between the disassembled parts of two chairs—one on the left and one on the right. The corset has two sets of lacings: on the right, a white lace is loosely tied; on the left, a jute lace, also loose, secures a long wooden piece of chair covered in soil. Each chair is represented by three components: a backrest, a seat, and a leg. The backrest of the chair to the right is created using dried coffee grounds. It took weeks to collect the coffee waste from the office where I work. Once I had sufficient capsules, I remove the coffee off the capsule, and put the grounds in a tray to dry. The seat is composed of two cracked wooden fragments from a broken chair. The leg, also placed on the right, is similarly created with coffee waste. On the left side of the corset, the backrest is laid horizontally in a landscape orientation, facing inward toward the corset. The seat is a piece taken from a found chair, and the leg, positioned at the far left, is a wooden leg from another disassembled chair.

“In life, we wear many layers, shifting between different identities and roles. It is easy to forget who we truly are beneath the façades. The woman wearing the corset is silent. I am her voice. While she may hesitate about what she wants, she is certain of what she does not want. She refuses perfection because it is clear that we are not successful in all the "departments" of our life. The pieces in this work are not perfect—nor are they meant to be.”