Checking in with María Fernanda Videla Urra

The Hub

By Charlene Adhiambo

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In María Fernanda Videla Urra’s experimental short film “La Vida Normal“, a drawing mannequin gains a large social media following during quarantine and reckons with his own high status and material identity. We spoke to Videla Urra to reflect on what it means to be an artist and a human in these times.

 

CA: First off, how are you doing?

MVU: I’m hoping for the spring to arrive here in the south of Chile. I’m pretty overwhelmed by the news around the world, so I suppose I’m navigating different emotions.

 

Your mannequin becomes a social media influencer in quarantine, which gives him an audience with which he can connect. What are ways that you have been able to connect to other artists and your loved ones?

I have had a very introverted experience lately. I connect with friends on video calls, but I’m focused on parenting my two year old toddler and working. By the end of the day there is not much time to connect with other artists.

 

The mannequin’s social media presence is something new he tries, due to the isolation, but also the boredom. Have you picked up any new skills or hobbies? 

I’m trying to develop some skills related to home and daily aspects of life. I never experience boredom, but I have tried to create a vegetable garden with not much success. Also baking bread and cookies with my daughter, but I stopped when I realized how much weight I gained.  

 

In your film, your mannequin discovers he is a material. What are ways that humans are facing our ‘material identity’, or our limitations, right now?

This is a very deep question. I realized every week a different aspect of my own material identity. I have the feeling we are experiencing a dark period of history, but the most important thing I see in different aspects of life has to do with how our society is excessively immersed in the individual. The lack of a social project manifests in our current world crisis, and we need to examine why.  

 

Although quarantine is forcing people at large to face mortality and our limitations more closely, is there a positive to this? For instance, your mannequin discovers he is not as in control as he believed, but he also discovers he is part of the Earth. Yes, wood is burned, but also, trees abound. What are the strengths and possibilities in his and human limitations?

I constantly feel I’m living in a polarized world. Today, this polarization is for me a response to the social crisis. It is hard to be positive today, which is an exercise we need to practice, but I feel the crisis is a possibility to make change, to rediscover our priorities and modify ourselves from the ground up. The mannequin in a way discovers the complex network we live in, and that is the beginning of his own change of paradigm.

 

 

Charlene Adhiambo is The Play Company’s current Literary Intern. She hails from Atlanta, Georgia by way of Nairobi, Kenya. You can reach her at literaryintern@playco.org.