NAÏVY
Coco Capitán
Naïvy by Coco Capitán
Coco Capitán’s new solo show, her first in London for four years, features photography, painting and found objects, brought together by her long-held fascination for the sea. Capitán’s ‘Naïvy’ is fantastical; far-removed from the military: regimented, disciplinary, homogenous. In the Lost Naïvy, identity is fluid, groupthink disappears, and although the collective sails together, each member is distinct. It is something Capitán conceived from her want — a desire to transcend society’s strictures.
Capitán takes the sea and its attendant themes of adventure and isolation as a framework through which to reimagine a collection of works; some are new, some are old, and as is characteristic for the multimedia artist, the selection spans multiple mediums: photographs sit alongside paintings, ephemera next to handwritten texts. Bright, burning blue loops everything together: swirling seas, thick paint, and the sailor suit embellished with embroidery, acrylics, and words — artistic interventions, which introduce variation into an archetypal uniform, creating a re-envisioned version of the sailor shirt.
The sense of freedom, escape, and the unknown, which moves through the show, is especially poignant at this moment. The sea, with its connotations of adventure and escapism, seems a fitting subject to explore during such lockdown-filled times as these. Capitán’s Lost Naïvy moves through the sea adrift, reimagining the world. The sea is not a place to conquer; it has become a space to escape.
Coco Capitán: Naïvy is at Maximillian William, London from September 11 to October 30, 2020 and featured in the pages of At Large Magazine.
Coco Capitán’s new solo show, her first in London for four years, features photography, painting and found objects, brought together by her long-held fascination for the sea. Capitán’s ‘Naïvy’ is fantastical; far-removed from the military: regimented, disciplinary, homogenous. In the Lost Naïvy, identity is fluid, groupthink disappears, and although the collective sails together, each member is distinct. It is something Capitán conceived from her want — a desire to transcend society’s strictures.
Capitán takes the sea and its attendant themes of adventure and isolation as a framework through which to reimagine a collection of works; some are new, some are old, and as is characteristic for the multimedia artist, the selection spans multiple mediums: photographs sit alongside paintings, ephemera next to handwritten texts. Bright, burning blue loops everything together: swirling seas, thick paint, and the sailor suit embellished with embroidery, acrylics, and words — artistic interventions, which introduce variation into an archetypal uniform, creating a re-envisioned version of the sailor shirt.
The sense of freedom, escape, and the unknown, which moves through the show, is especially poignant at this moment. The sea, with its connotations of adventure and escapism, seems a fitting subject to explore during such lockdown-filled times as these. Capitán’s Lost Naïvy moves through the sea adrift, reimagining the world. The sea is not a place to conquer; it has become a space to escape.
Coco Capitán: Naïvy is at Maximillian William, London from September 11 to October 30, 2020 and featured in the pages of At Large Magazine.
“We all have different pressures that come from different places. I don’t think we are free to be what we are. When I speak about the possibility of being free and being oneself, I mean the possibility of being whoever you want to be outside of that pressure.”
“Capitan’s exhibition perfectly sums up what most of our country has dreamt about during the last months: the freedom of the sea and the hope that the storm has passed.”
“I wanted to form a collective, which could exist outside the rules of convention; a collective of people as lost as myself.”
“It is here, in the ocean, surrounded by salty sea and swathes of the sky, that Coco Capitán intends to disappear; to melt into the uncharted.”
Alongside photographs taken in a variety of places including Mallorca, Sweden, the Caribbean, and New York state, a selection of paintings, annotated images, found photographs, items of clothing and other ephemera recalling naval history and travel appear in the exhibition.
In paintings and annotated on photographs, Capitán’s writing appears penned in her characteristic scrawl: whether musing on the color blue or adding caption-like comments to an image.
"Capitán's Lost Naïvy moves through the sea adrift, reimagining the world. The sea is not a place to conquer; it has become a space to escape."
Many of the series’ characters wear the American Navy uniform of World War II, but it is always modified. There is always some addition, which symbolizes the differences between people even among a uniformed group. Visually, Capitán’s crew is the antithesis of the conventional Navy: They are cute girls, or skinny boys, far-removed from the image of a traditional male sailor.
Capitán regards the sailor suit as an emblem for a paradoxical condition of individualistic freedom and collective belonging, tinged with the melancholic sense that the fraternity who wears this uniform would not welcome her into the ranks.
“There’s a fascinating tension in the act of extending and embellishing an object that’s already had an unseen life of its own. I think by ‘editing’ the Navy uniform, I am trying to break this standardization, and make the differences of each individual rise beyond the image of the collective.”
COCO CAPITÁN
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