Cubo Blanco features "Divine Proportion" by María Teresa Hincapié
Divine Proportion, presented at the Salón Nacional de Artistas, underscores the power of austerity in a world marked by acceleration, consumption, and excess. For several days, María Teresa Hincapié inhabited an empty expanse—an ocean of concrete slabs whose cracks she carefully seeded with small, timid shoots of grass. When she wasn’t tending her modest garden, she walked, her bare feet tracing almost imperceptible steps, crossing the space from side to side with extreme slowness. The frantic pace of the city seemed to dissolve in her wake. The performance unfolded around three inseparable elements: the body, surrendering to the present and turning its presence into ritual; the space, a hard floor transformed into landscape; and time, stretched into a minimal, sustained cadence.
This artistic action proposes an experience that embraces simplicity as a path of resistance amid a culture dominated by speed and consumption. Slowness becomes an act of attentiveness and critical response—a way of questioning how we inhabit the world. Her solemn presence becomes a medium of transcendence, inviting the viewer into a meditative state. The piece calls us to contemplate the fragility and persistence of living things, suggesting that pausing the everyday vertigo can open pathways to meanings closer to our own nature.
María Teresa Hincapié is regarded as one of the pioneers of performance art in Colombia and Latin America. She began her career in theater before turning toward an intimate and spiritual artistic practice. She participated in major international biennials and exhibited at institutions such as the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bucaramanga, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Spain—always upholding the value of simplicity and making daily life itself a work of art.
