Lillian Davies

Hommage à Lygia Clark

2018

Life in a crowded, bureaucratic foreign city can rather limit freedom of movement; contemporary motherhood can wear down our reserves of physical and intellectual energy. But what if these restrictions on time and space are the spark of creative energy? Lygia Clark (Rio de Janeiro, 1920–1988) made her matchbox sculptures (Estruturas de Caixas de Fosforos, 1964) informed by her native country’s Neo-Concrete movement, as well as her personal interest in the push and pull between the internal and external experience of the physical body. Her matchbox sculptures are limited in size and material, always painted in one, at most two, primary colors, and are terribly beautiful. A matchbox is a box, but a very small one with a tremendous potential for ignition.