Ecstasy, Status, Statue

The installation Ecstasy, Status, Statue (Éxtasis, Status, Estatua, 1994) comprises a multitude of resin casts of the heels of men's and women's shoes. The heels are of varying sizes and shapes, oriented upside down and placed directly on the floor in a grid, reminiscent perhaps of Minimalist sculpture as well as taxonomic displays. Formally seductive, the installation suggests multiple layers of possible meaning. On one level, it reflects Moraza's ongoing inquiry into the pedestal and its role in the definition of the category of sculpture; here the pedestal is subverted, or ironically inverted. The upside-down heels also inevitably conjure the missing bodies to which they belong. In Freudian terms, shoes are prototypical fetish-objects—objects of displaced desire resulting from the male child's shock upon perceiving his mother's sexual difference and his selection of a symbolic substitute. However, Moraza's installation calls into question strict notions of sexual difference: if high and low heels serve as markers for the differentiated territories of masculine and feminine, the great diversity and gradation in the heights of the heels here imply intermediate territories between the two. The work also speaks to Jacques Lacan's notion of desire as a residue, a void, an extreme fragility, or a fracture—the division of the subject into language, or, as in this particular case, the world turned topsy-turvy. Finally, the work challenges the kind of visuality normally associated with sculpture: the heels, close to the floor, do not allow for comfortable observation up close, while a complete view of the work can only be achieved from a more elevated position.