Artwork: Woman Wood Marimba, from the series: Woman Wood Guanacaste. SOLD

In the third work of the Mujer Madera Guanacaste series, the relationship between woman and territory acquires a collective dimension. Two female figures play the marimba, an instrument deeply rooted in Guanacaste's cultural identity and a national symbol of Costa Rican culture and folklore.

The marimba has historically accompanied community life: popular festivals, celebrations, and gatherings where music transforms individual experience into shared memory. Declared the national instrument par excellence in 1996 and a national symbol of Costa Rican culture and folklore in 2017, its presence here transcends the musical object to become a bearer of tradition and belonging.

Unlike previous works, a single Mujer Madera is no longer enough. The duplication introduces the notion of community: for music to exist, there must be encounter, listening, coordination, and transmission. The two figures share the traditional sabanero hat and bodies traversed by organic forms that evoke the grain of wood. In front of them, the marimba expands to occupy a large part of the composition, visually linking body and instrument.

The choice of female figures also introduces a reading specific to the artist's symbolic universe. Wood (La Madera in Spanish) is feminine and, from this association, the performers emerge as personifications of living matter that acquires body, memory, and voice. The work does not seek to determine who should interpret tradition, but rather to open it to new readings.

Here, wood permeates the entire composition: it is imagined body, it is an instrument, and it is matter capable of producing sound. In this way, the transformation initiated in the first pieces reaches its culmination: the territory is no longer only inhabited or embodied; it is also heard and shared.