Lia Porto’s work can be considered a sort of project of dichotomies. The artist questions these polarities––of order/chaos, the domestic/the unruly, and structure/liberty, among others––in her series, Foreign Gardens, 2021. It is Porto’s use of a wide array of materials that marks these distinctions, leaving one in a state of variegated sensations.

Considered together, the paintings explore domesticity and materiality, and particularly gendered conventions as well as social decorum. The works are beaming with traditional feminine tropes: they are rife with lush pink and purple-hued flowers as well often incorporated within parts of the home. The natural imagery is set upon what appears to be a fence in Foreign Gardens #2 and Foreign Gardens #5. The paintings in the Foreign Gardens series present a constellation of “stuff”: fabrics of leaves, plants, gold-leaf arrangements, pieces of the fences, shapes of beauteous birds, almost always all of which is from hand-cut decorative wallpaper. Our visual sensation is thus flooded with colors, shapes, materials, all deconstructed and yet amalgamated together in Porto’s vibrant work. There is a lack of visual order here within the myriad of materials and references. Within the canvases, there are particular moments that evoke nature, the environment, and, in addition to the floral, a vegetative state. What Porto achieves so well is not simply the dichotomy of order and disorder in her work, but also the dichotomy of senses. 

It is particularly the visual and the olfactory senses that merge together in the Foreign Gardens paintings. Certainly, there is a sense of synethesia in Porto’s work as well; one sense gives way to another. For Foreign Gardens, it is the visual that gives way to the olfactory. Take, for example, the abundance of flowers teeming out of each crevice of the canvas, the ornate profusion and bright vibrancy of these floral elements are so strong as to evoke a smell. Porto’s work fabulously intertwines disparate elements so that the abundance of one sensation can induce another. The proliferation of the “stuff” marked as feminine — the traditional feminine tropes of the flower, Eve, and domesticity — actually provides these items with sublime power. Moving beyond the traditionally gendered connotations applied through the visual, Porto imparts these items with a greater power, to induce the smell of the natural. 

Yet, Porto adds an additional element in her probe of gendered identity here: she considers her transcultural one as well. Place is inherently bound up in her work: Porto was born in Patagonia and is currently living and working in Argentina. There is a certain specificity to these deconstructed elements: the flowers, birds, ornamental fabrics and designs are “found objects,” as the materials note. These objects appear to be site-specific, perhaps “found” in the artist’s hometown in South America. Perhaps there is an element of chance in the found object yet there is also the sense of specificity in the way in which Porto particularly constructs these paintings. Porto’s specificity of the “found object” considers questions of randomness and chance on the one hand, as well as order and structure on the other. 

Porto here employs a deconstructivist as well as assemblage technique: the artist finds and cuts-up objects she merges back together on her canvas again. The result is a myriad of dichotomies: of identity, sensation, and materials. In doing so, the artist questions notions of domesticity, gender roles, ornamentation, and how our senses — both visual and olfactory — react to these conceptions. 

- The Editors

With a practice grounded in painting and drawing I initially depicted utopian landscapes teeming with lush flora and fauna imagery. I later expanded my media choices to embroidery, collage, three dimensional objects and installations. While still referencing the natural world I now focus in the domestic scenario through domestic materials and found objects that I alter, deconstruct and eventually invade. I use this platform, like a household archeologist, to trace my own investigation about transcultural influences, gender role, social standards and aesthetics. 

I´m currently investigating gardens as spaces where spontaneous growth of natural vegetation coexists with human action.  The land is nurtured and at the same time colonized in order to reflect domestic logic and aesthetic, becoming a cultural form. In this series I created fictionalized gardens as artificious textiles. These pieces evoke tapestries which have historically been luxurious ornamented objects where gardens were represented. 

Constructing these tapestries is preceded by a deconstruction process of wallpapers, fabric patterns and motifs, plus the addition of discarded trimmings, artificial flowers and small found objects.   With all these materials, I create my own ornament to establish symbolic references. 

I deliberately adopted the perspective of an outsider, that has no access to the garden itself but is confronted to its hedges. I envision an organic, natural and joyful movement of life but at the same time, focus on fences, the liminal areas of intersection. They  become  a model for man-made borders to interrogate on the nature of segregation. Physical barriers can create a sense of place, security and identity, they are meant to prevent movement , migration, access or escape and establish control or ownership but they fail to interrupt the exchange of substances such as air and water or the growth of roots and brunches.  In the same way that they can’t interrupt the intangible exchange of shared memories, visions and culture.  I conceived these pieces as visual essays on the inevitable permeability that carries our individual and collective consciousness.