The Art Visual calling from the Generalitat Valenciana consists in producing exhibitions of emerging artists, which itinerant during a year around the Valencian Community (*1). Lorena Amorós, Carlos Domingo, Nico Munuera, Juan Carlos Nadal, Javier Pividal, Susana Vidal and María Alonso Borso, were the last year winners.

It is interesting, from the artists just mentioned, to be able to follow the track of María Alonso (Valencia, 1972) after her past years in Cuba and the U.K., since her brilliant and austere interventions of mid nineties are still remembered. It is essential to quote her proposals in Free Spaces, The Found Space and Art & Nature. Most of her work, consciously rooted in gender discourses, posed questions like the invisibility or the situation of women in the Public domain, although it was always seen from the point of view of her personal experience - not in vain the object of her images was always herself-.

Iyalo, the title of her present project, comes from a yoruba expression which literal meaning (in Cuba) is "Mother in the Saint". In this occasion Alonso defends the existence of some early images, bound to the primary elements and to the body. This discourse can be connected with the essentialism of the sixties, but also with the connexions between spirituality, body and nature in the Cuban Ana Mendieta and, nowadays, with the photographic work of her compatriot Marta María Pérez. Subtle photographs of energy arms or of hands who hold flowers between their fingers, images that, as the same María Alonso states "can be found in Egyptian Art, Renaissance Paintings, the Indian Goddesses like Tara or even tarot decks.

Alonso aspires to build, therefore, powerful images, which she understands as retrieval, as a revelation...Photographs which do not always need text, which do not have one closed meaning.

(*1) (Valencia, Alicante and Castellón)