Suspended from the Timken's ceiling is a massive paper-lantern poporo vessel — used to mash coca leaves — casting shadows on the floor.
In artist Marisol Rendón's native Colombia, the coca leaf has a long history as a medicinal plant, chewed by farmers and workers for sustenance in the high elevations of the Andes.
Inspired by the 17th- and 18th-century scientific illustrations of Maria Sibylla Merian, Rendón embellished her poporo sculpture with her own drawings of coca leaves and the coca tussock moth, Eloria noyesi.
"I just created an illustration from a coca plant with the moths that are actually the only moths that eat the coca leaves, to the point that the Colombian government wanted to eradicate the illicit coca plantations with the moth," Rendón said. "I decided to work with the illustrations to give a little bit of connection to the meaning of the object itself, the idea of landscape and also the idea of this ‘other’ — something that can be a pest that can actually be something that can be beneficial in a certain way."
The coca leaf's complicated evolution into the illegal cocaine trade is one of the inspirations for Rendón's residency exhibition at the Timken, creating unusual and fascinating connections to elements in older art in the museum.
"It's just a leaf, it's just a tree, it's just a beautiful plant. Almost like an apology to the plant itself," she said. "Initially I was connecting to the idea of a mandorla, from the idea of glory, of the mandorla that we have in some of the artworks, the particular almond-shaped mandorla."
Another large work is a stretched piece of fabric, carefully teased with a household lice comb to display an oversized, delicate coca leaf with almost topographic detail.
The exhibit, "Tapando el Sol con un Dedo," or "Covering the Sun with One Finger," is named after an expression Rendón grew up with that hints at glory, self-deception and fooling oneself.
She created these works while in residence at the Timken, working alongside museumgoers over the summer. The Timken's summer residency program is designed to bring contemporary artists into direct visual dialogue with the museum's collection.
Rendón drew from historical motifs of glory and devotion in art. She was also fascinated by the way museums display, frame and spotlight works.
"I decided to also work around the idea of halos and mandorlas from the Russian exhibit that we have in the other room, because of the importance and the necessity for us to always create some sort of halo — symbolic halos — around our lives," Rendón said.
She used the intensive and almost mathematical mezzotint printmaking process to etch a mesh of hundreds of lines into copper, then burnished and scraped the image before applying ink. The resultant prints each mimic a halo, drawing connections with moths and coca leaves.
The mezzotint process also holds meaning to Rendón.
"It's a subtractive technique. You go from dark to light, which is also very symbolic to me," she said. "I feel that a lot of my work, ever since I can think about, working with the idea of light, working about the idea of hope and illusion and glory — just the ephemeral things that we build — human beings and that obsessiveness. I think that I can sort of correlate that with the metaphor of our lives always searching for the light. I think that in a certain way, I enjoyed looking for the light in a copper plate."
Projected on the wall is a looped video that transforms NASA sun imagery into dozens of fireflies peppering Colombian landscapes. A small stool situated in front of the wall-sized video invites visitors to sit and create their own halo as one sun enlarges.
The first work visitors will see when entering the exhibit is a massive charcoal sketch of layered, antique frames — all real frames elsewhere in the museum. The intricate pencil work took Rendón months.
Then, crawling among the frames, she applied gold-leaf insects, representing the fragility and deception of glory.
"It's called 'There Goes Our Glory,' because I created this kind of little creature simulating almost — it can be anything, it can be termites, it can be something that is just coming out of the wood," she said. "I just wanted to give that sort of vulnerable aspect of the concept of glory — what does that mean? Also, the little imperfection of the idea of glory itself."
Marisol Rendón: "Tapando el Sol con un Dedo"
Through Oct. 12, 2025 | 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday | Timken Museum, 1500 El Prado, Balboa Park | Free
