The Ballad

Caroline Mesquita's sculptural practice intertwines the materiality of her altered, oxidized, and painted brass sheets with theatrical playfulness. Her metallurgic experiments result in life-size figures, interacting with each other in a mise-en-scène crafted from sculpted sheet metal and an environment of coated steel. For the exhibition “The Ballad”, Mesquita produced a series of twelve sculpted characters interacting and facing each other or the viewer, as their presence blurs the line between fiction and reality, humans and mannequins. It is a procession, a form of public celebration, a moment of communion, frozen in time and space. [publisher's note]