SO MUCH SADNESS FROM SO MANY THINGS (THEY / THEM)
Tanta tristeza de tantas cosas (elle)

Marisabel has always approached life and work as a fervent admirer. Their infinite curiosity and fascination with artistic and cultural phenomena have led them, throughout their career, to embody various trades and professions: filmmaker, sculptor, writer, office worker, radio host, merchant, and, in this exhibition, tailor and dressmaker. In So much sadness, from so many things (they/them), Marisabel presents a runway show in which the models are rabbits, and the paraphernalia surrounding them introduces us to a leporine universe that places them simultaneously under the categories of mammals, pets, cute commercial products, and contemporary imagery of tenderness.
As often happens in many series of work from the Marisabelian galaxy, the main character exists across multiple thresholds, leaping between categories of knowledge and aesthetic universes. In this case, quite literally, since the character is a rabbit. This is how Marisabel turns to My Melody, the character created by the Japanese entertainment company Sanrio, which operates both as a fashion icon and as an ontological question.
Marisabel surrenders to this figure because, like them, My Melody has chosen a hat as a protective uniform and as a marker of a distinctive style. My Melody wears a version of the Gorro Esponja Espacial (2019), perhaps the first fashion design in Marisabel's artistic career. My Melody's, however, is not only round like Marisabel's hat-helmets, but also takes the shape of her upright ears. But then, what is "My Melody"? My Melody is a rabbit-shaped character. And what is a rabbit? A rabbit is an animal, a pet, a drawing, a character, a portal into cuteness; it is part of a herd, inhabits a burrow, and can also be a fashion emblem. And a rabbit, does it hop or leap? Does it live in a herd or a nest?
Exploring My Melody's multiple layers through the repetition of the image and its dematerialisation is one of the characteristic tropes of Marisabel's practice. To understand this gesture, it is important to remember one of the mantras of this universe: if you have trouble understanding a concept, repeat it. Bis, bis. And in repetition, you will find answers.
For this season, Marisabel proposes denim as both material and silhouette, a collective alternative to the exhausting emotional labour of moving through everyday life as beings who feel everything in a world where everything seems to be constantly burning and fading away. Taking on the role of a tailor constitutes, in itself, a gesture that alludes both to the family legacy connected to the textile trade and sewing, and to a tribute to dressmaking and to fashion, to the power of editing and understanding the making of clothing as an endeavour towards protection safeguarding (…)

Gisselle Girón Casas
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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q2Sh7OGLcXjhEyZV2vZ70pHIQEMY6E2J/view?usp=drive_link

But what does it mean to love a database?
To love a boy who is a flower
that is a girl who is a cat that is a train?  
Cute accelerationism¹

Dear Melody,
What Sanrio character are you?² None, I am creepy and cute.
My Melody is a bunny who wears a pink hood. She lives with her friends3 in the Mariland forest. She always wears the hood to cover or protect her two ears. My Melody always carries it with her, it’s something like magic, as if the hood could protect her from something, or maybe like that thing we treasure and wear to feel safe. Maybe it’s the same for both, her and her hood.  
The character of My Melody belongs to the Sanrio group³, a Japanese company that created characters like Hello Kitty in 1975.

I can’t write your name

because, I do know your name,

but I don’t know who you are

I don’t know you,

and you don’t know me

I don’t know My Melody, someone introduced her to me a year ago. She comes across as soft, sweet, and strange. I don’t know her, but somehow, I’ve felt moved by her. I watched a few episodes of the cartoon on YouTube, and I was really touched by how tender the character is. As I watched, I felt it was something I wanted to possess and take care of.
When I think of My Melody, I think of all the times I’ve seen her drawn thousands of times on different walls in different places or reinterpreted on various products for different occasions: children’s parties, graffiti, socks, stickers.

My Melody replicas that alter the original design to avoid patent issues. In this way, My Melody is reinterpreted thousands of times, copied by the commercial industry and by humans (…)

marisabel <3

Continue reading here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sEPDVcjjibTQRA7A9tH8chao3wccCx4m/view?usp=sharing