Mara León
Aznalcázar, Seville, Spain. 1970.
Mara León is a conceptual photographer, photography that she defines as “the supremacy of the artist’s idea before the materialized work”. In her work, which is clearly performative, she uses her own body “as a reflection”.
A body that is at once fragile and resolute; helpless and firm in its singularity.
A reflection, as if it were a mirror, confronts us with the body alone and naked before the world, without compassion, showing the marks that experiences have drawn on the skin. Without further ado we observe the residues of the past. The vertigo of life and its limiting realities between opposite poles. To travel to that pole that we do not want to step on, to confront the viewer with his innermost, deepest and truest conflicts, to return another reality to the observer.
She has received awards such as the First Prize in International Photography Competition Alliance Française and Pilar Citoler Foundation (2013), the Third Prize in Photography Enaire Foundation (2019) and Special Mention No. 1 of International Master Promotion Conceptual Photography (EFTI, 2009). Her photographs have been exhibited at PHOTOESPAÑA 2011 and 2013, and at Bienal Pilar Citoler (2016), Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, Rafael Ortiz Gallery (Seville) or Cero Gallery (Madrid), among other institutions.
