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The secret of my goats

Martha Petrona Jimenez Perez, with this particular delivery of gouaches with drawing in ink, shows off the goat's distinctive typology: its mythological genesis, its physical features, way of life and aesthetic significance. So these beasts now appear, tamed by conceptualization, as vital elements of the exhibition but linked to other codes preconceived by the artist in previous series and in her personal life.

Through the protruding horns, the artist alludes to protection, defense and strength, she also considers her essential support for virility, the phallic sense of erotic notions. The fact that goats live in herds and have been domesticated by man (around the eighth millennium BC) indicates the human condition, where they lead the coexistence, humanitarian bonds and women, as a redemptive and precursor of a social herd. Without mentioning, that this quadruped is largely evoked, on the one hand as a sign of sacrifice and on the other as an emblem of veneration, precepts that were assumed by the different cultures of Egypt. 

So Martha Jimenez embraces these premises to state her speech about it and she orients her position from an anthropological orbit. She represents goats and women united with their adjacent characteristics, to point to intense interpersonal connections between individuals of different or the same sex, as well as to filial, nuptial, fraternal, maternal and spiritual links. In this sense, The secret of my goats invites not only to discover the key to correct in the handling of relationships with others, at the same time, refers to a confidential message of the herd that remains silent and is present in these artworks, but in a hidden way.

By: Lic. Yaniel Perez Guerra
Curator and Critic of Visual Arts.
October 18, 2016.