MATTY MACHADO
There is a hybridity in Matty Machado’s practice that entices the viewer to look closer. In their digital collage works, they choose every image with intention, scouring for those that fulfill a need, want, and desire. They may seem light and humorous formally, as you notice the colorful bird “hats” adorning llamas and frogs in the piece dirt— an homage to 19th-century “murderous millinery”— but there is a coded language beneath, masking something much more weighty, much more opaque, in this thesis show aptly titled, Heavy Things.
You can find comfort in how Machado mashes disparate materials together or plays with whimsy in their textile choices. Even the image of Lindsay Lohan can bring back nostalgia for those contemporaries of Parent Trap and Freaky Friday. The self-described “cutesy” in Machado’s choice of color, light, and layering feels like a home you haven’t visited in a long time: from the “orange fruit” of the walls as a tribute to the Floridian homes of their loved ones to the lilac lace reminding us of the decorative papel picado of Latin festivals. Yet, even in these stylistic references tied to their childhood, we too feel how we are being beckoned to reconcile with our early years—reimagining our engagement with the tangible and intangible spheres of our existence.
The Failed Weapons soft sculptures in silk, organza, and other delicate materials are an homage to the importance of the community Machado has found, intentionally arranged in contradiction. Conceptually, the graceful nature of the pleated transparent silk is made tense in its form and by the colorful coil chain it hangs from, as it straddles the line between masculine and feminine and where our pride, grief, hope, and love fall along that binaried spectrum. Machado has discovered something in us, as if we, too, are reconciling what is perceived and what we know of the self. Heavy Things emerges as a delicately radical show and an exciting peek into what is to come.
— K. Lynn Robinson, OSU Department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy, PhD Student
EXHIBITION DOCUMENTATION BY SAM LO, OSU MFA PHOTOGRAPHY 2026