Aspen’s Sister Cities Plaza hosts installation by Ana María Hernando

If you’ve walked by Aspen’s Sister Cities Plaza in the last month a public art piece resembling three tulle clouds may have caught your eye. The installation, “My Longing Doesn’t Quiet/Mi añoranza no se calla,” was created by Argentine artist Ana María Hernando and first exhibited in Madison Square Park as part of a commission by the Madison Square Park Conservancy, before making its way to the Rockies.

The work is a two-part visual and auditory public art experience being presented by Red Brick Center for the Arts (RBCA) and the Aspen Public Art Plan in partnership with Aspen Transportation Department and Roaring Fork Transportation Authority through Sept. 15.

“Anna Marie Hernando’s piece was chosen because her work is about the human capacity for kindness and our want to experience joy,” said Sarah Roy, executive director of RBCA. “Her work also speaks to resilience and abundance and to the idea of creating human connection and creating community. That really resonated.”

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Hernando, who is from Argentina but now calls Colorado home, was invited by Roy to submit her work as part of a public call for artists to create a new sculpture for Rubey Park Transit Center and Sister Cities Plaza. She was a 2023 Joan Mitchell fellow and the 2020 Henry Clews in Sculpture presented by La Napoule Art Foundation. She enjoys using fabrics, threads, and words in her work and has exhibited pieces at the MCA Denver, the Denver Botanical Gardens, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and in “Narrative Threads” at the Moody Art Center in Houston.

The project includes eight poems in both English and Spanish that can be accessed either through the RBCA’s website, redbrickaspen.com, or by scanning QR codes on the sculptures themselves. The works at Rubey Park Transit Center and the poetry recordings were created site-specific for this project. 

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The main component of Hernando’s work is her focus on using tulle fabrics. Hernando said for her tulle is a fabric that represents a certain type of femininity that she is eager to challenge.

“Tulle as a fabric is a material that’s already so charged of meaning and archetypical roles that have been assigned to women through the years. You have brides, princesses, and ballerinas, who are all characters from the fantasy world,” Hernando said. “It’s very feminine, but also feminine in a way that our society sees women in fairy tales who are naive and always have a stronger person that protects them, where they give away their power, and that’s a recipe for everlasting happiness.”

Hernando sees the significance of tulle differently, that of a material that looks soft but is quite strong.

“For me, it’s another model of power, not about giving away power but being in power in the feminine,” she explained.

On Thursday, Hernando will hold an artist talk at Aspen Art Museum Rooftop from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. to speak about her site-specific installation and the importance of public art. This artist talk is presented in collaboration with the city of Aspen and the Red Brick Center for the Arts.

“I think public art is an invitation for people to see art, and not feel judged, but welcomed,” she said. “Public art can be refreshing and an invitation to think about the urgency of life and ask, ‘Why are we alive?’ And, ‘What do we want about life? And I think all of the temporary work does that more than public art that is in a place for years which people can sometimes get used to. But temporary work that appears and then it’s gone, keeps you awake, and that’s important.”

For more information about My Longing Doesn’t Quiet / Mi añoranza no se calla, please visit Red Brick Center for the Arts.

Sarah Girgis is the Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Aspen Times. She can be reached at 970-429-9151 or sgirgis@aspentimes.com.