Transitions: Maria Yony Lopez Marulanda

Located at the The Noyes Gallery at Claridge, 123 S. Indiana Ave, Atlantic City, NJ

Maria Yony Lopez Marulanda's identity as an intensely social being fuels her work, as she strives to understand the experiences of mankind. Marulanda's desire to uncover the varied motivations of Man is present throughout this series, which seeks to comprehend our tendencies towards chaos and self-destruction. Through her process of creating these pieces, she meticulously examines our seeming inability to learn from our mistakes, resulting in irreversible consequences affecting all living beings, as well as the Earth we inhabit.

.....we should ask ourselves about all of our achievements, throughout human history, of which we are responsible for having inflicted so much pain and destruction, in an inhuman way upon our only Home which is Earth and to our fellow beings; we are God's greatest creation, and as superior beings of nature, we should comport ourselves as such.  -Maria Yony Lopez Marulanda

Despite this troubling presentation of our propensity towards barbarism and recklessness, Maria and her work assert that with bold, united participation from everyone, we could halt this destruction once and for all. If we choose not to act in a way worthy of our status as superior beings, Marulanda wonders if God would hesitate to annihilate the maelstorm which his own children have caused. With the willingness to cleanse His universe of iniquity, she theorizes, comes the willingness to remove all traces of us from the Earth we are so intent on destroying.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.