The two series, Broken Things and Nomad Patterns, are made from fragments of everyday objects – cups, bowls, jars, pots and the like – that appear as staged somehow indeterminately between something that is about to collapse or has just been restored; between things that have been invested with the attention of care but that also have the appearance of a ruin. These works aim to reflect on aspects of loss and care, disposal and preservation, and on the relationship we develop with the day-to-day objects that populate our everyday lives. 

While Broken Things employs commercially available floral and miscellaneous transfer-printed motifs, Nomad Patterns takes as its central figure the well-known motif Willow Pattern, an image of which is taken from second-hand or antique objects and then reproduced by means of a custom-make transfer print. 

Marca no registrada, 2013

In situ exhibition project
Espacio Odeón, Bogotá
Materials: imitation gold leaf and latex

Marca no registrada is a project that responded to the material conditions and history of the exhibition space: the old Teatro Popular de Bogotá. After its closure in 1953 the building was subject to a number of successive attempts to re-employ it for a more contemporary use before being acquired, in its present somewhat neglected state, for use as an art space. Traces of time and human intervention are what characterize the space today, and can be read in the various marks that have accumulated on the building’s surfaces.

Avocado’s skins and stones, toothpicks, resin, gold leaf..

Second-hand soft toys, plaster, gold leaf Dimensions variable

Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago de Chile

A large number of second-hand cuddly toys were collected from various flea markets in Europe and South America. Each object was then covered in layers of plaster and gesso and then gilded.

Second-hand soft toys, plaster, gold leaf Dimensions variable

Faltas/Faults, 2014

Faltas/Faults, Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago de Chile

Through a process that combined turning and moulding, around 2.200 lipsticks were altered and displayed on an oval plinth. In moulds created specifically for the purpose, each lipstick was re-cast and replaced in its typical tubular case.

Over 2.000 intervened lipsticks; oval wooden base, 320 cm long, 740 cm across, 100 cm high, top surface width: 20 cm

Poetics of the Handmade, 2007 MOCA, Los Angeles, USA Manufractured: The Conspicuous

Transformation of Everyday Objects, 2008 MoCC, Portland, Oregon, USA Tectonic Shift: Contemporary Art from Chile, 2007 Phillips & de Pury, London, UK

Various discarded or obsolete ceramic objects are photographed in a studio-like setting. The physical photographic images are torn then put back together by a delicate stitching in gold thread making reference to an antique Japanese technique of ceramic restoration that used gold lacquer.

Faltas/Faults, 2013-14
Latex, remainders. Dimensions variable.
Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago, Chile

Solihull, 2013
Photography, gold thread, paper, wooden frame. 125 objects. 17.3 x 17.3 x 3 cm (each)

Soft Toys, 2013
Second-hand soft toys, plaster, gold leaf, wooden shelf. Dimensions variable.

Cobalt, 2013
Ceramic, 161 objects. Dimensions variable.

Everyday objects are endowed with a certain kind of invisibility that is somewhat anomalous to their persistent presence. This work highlights such an ignored presence by means of multiplying a banal, inanimate object that is familiar to a great many. Thousands of copies of the inner space of a disposable cup were casted in different kinds and types of plaster, producing an optical vibration when juxtaposing the various shades of whites.

over 1500 plaster objects casted from a disposable cup
wooden shelves

Mimesis, 2013
DuflonRacz, Bern, Switzerland

Maximinimalist, 2007
Institute of Visual Arts , Milwaukee, USA

El objeto y su manifestación, 2002
Galería Animal, Santiago, Chile

These works bring together the subject matter and composition characteristic of still life painting and the antique Japanese technique kintsugi (golden repair) for restoring ceramic objects.

C-Type print, golden thread, paper, wooden frame. 62,2 x 109,5 cm and 39,8 x 49,8 cm

Nature Morte, 2010

House of Propellers, London, UK

In her series Broken Things, Livia Marin deals thoroughly with the origin and artistic production of porcelain. The starting point is a broken or damaged vessel made of porcelain, which Livia Marin materially and figuratively puts into a floating condition. They float or drown in a liquid that seems to have poured out of the respective cups, jugs or saucers. In fact, it is the porcelain itself with its decor stretching over the surface. Thus, the “broken” objects not only reveal their fragility, but also enter into an entropic or emergent state. The form becomes material; the material represents the original state of the porcelain before it became an artistic form. The metamorphosis turns into a metaphor, for both its becoming and passing away.

Sewing patterns cut and made into a composition directly onto the gallery wall. The off-cuts of the patterns formed another composition on the opposite wall.

Sewing patterns, aluminium composite panel Dimensions variable

almost nothing (casi nada), 2017

Punto de Cultura Federico Ramírez, Concepción, Chile

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Photographic series

Second-hand, discarded tools were employed in this work to take natural latex casts that, when exhibited appear as chrysalis-like cases from which something has emerged.

Natural Latex Dimensions variable

Diane Van Deren, 2015 Galería Gabriela Mistral, Santiago de Chile

A three-stage project that commences with the purchase of a lot of slip cast moulds from Ebay for the manufacture of porcelain dolls.

Porcelain Dimensions Variable

Ch.ACO, 2015

Santiago de Chile

Fragments of photographs depicting ceramic objects thread, paper, casein paint, gold leaf, wooden frame Various dimensions

Relics, 2018 Senesi Contemporanea, London, UK

Wall piece formed by a series of fractured shards featuring fragments of the Willow Pattern motif.

Silkscreen on hard casting plaster 50 objects 18 x 26 x 1 cm each

Tectonic Shift: Contemporary Art from Chile, 2011 Saatchi Gallery, London

Porcelain, ply-birch shelves

Relics, 2018 Senesi Contemporanea, London, UK

Cosas Rotas juxtaposes the form of a map, the form of written language and the surface decoration of an everyday object. The contrasted geography of Chile, a verse of Pablo Neruda’s poem No hay olvido and a characteristic decorative motif used extensively in ceramic objects connotes the cultural and economic circulation of information and global power relations. With the introduction of the line from Neruda’s poem the work displaces these relationships to a more subjective context.

Silkscreen on plaster 900 x 280 x 0.5 cm

El lugar de lo invisible, 2009
Sala Gasco, Santiago de Chile