Maite De Orbe
Sublime Speed
There is a delicate oscillation between memory and fantasy in the photographic practice of Spanish, London based artist Maite de Orbe. The artist, preoccupied with embodied experience and expression, translates sideways time through image—time that glitters and pulsates. Maite seeks out the erotic in the everyday and reveals that the erotic can be found in the heat and speed of a motorcycle, the elusive magic of a stranger befriended on Christmas eve, or in a moment of stillness with a landscape.
There are elements of documentation in Maite’s work: London’s experimental performance artists, queer peers, the Domincan Republic’s ballroom scene; although the work is more concerned with bottling reality as it fractures and presents another form of language, or truth, through sensorial code. De Orbe is not seeking resolve; they are content to be held in poetic suspension and invite us to surrender for a moment, maybe longer.
We meet with Maite at the Assembly Darkrooms, a tight knit, community-run printing studio in East London (that they adore). As we speak, Maite sifts through new prints, pausing to tenderly reflect on portraits and memories, while tracing new connections between the images. Here we discuss the preparation for their first solo in London, A Moment Opposite to Blindness at Miłość gallery, the recent release of their photo book, The Infamous Spaghetti Sisters, a film on the queer ballroom scene in the Dominican Republic, and the power in stepping back to assess our impulses in the creative practice.
✬ see published version here
✬ images by XVR Studio