My sphere of vital and professional interest is Sculpture and the cores of my artistic creation and research include: Text, Body, Gender, Identity and Existence.
I work with the poetic potential of language at its fullest. Spectators get involved in my exhibitions, which combine pictorial, object and sculptural references from a word-focused work.
For me, as an artist, creation involves a constant search for one's own identity through work, which is framed in different human problems.
Our approach to creation goes through different places where identity lives. This problem involves the search for existence from different angles and positions. These diverse travels enhance the understanding of a world full of complex relations.
I elaborate my works so that, from the concept, emotion and utopia bring up several thoughts:
- They are enigmas that allow us to transcend materialism, the nature of objects and the definition of the written. They are hidden references to human nature, which are an allusion to the spiritual nature.
- They try to delimit a dual place of ambiguity, to define an implied space and, therefore, to generate a field of maximum opening for reflection.
- They are a personal vision of the world, of the other, seen through me; it is a vision that wants to be rigorous, lucid and severe, and that operates in a field crossed by a direction with two ways: irony and paradox.
- Its message is the result of the oscillation between three territories: the poetic, the conceptual and the critical.
Sculpture is the language where I establish my artistic work, and is, perhaps, among all the traditional territories of creation, the one that experiments the deepest transformation during the contemporary period. Although the highest point of this radical transformation happened in the mid-sixties and onwards through the avant-garde movements, such as the Minimalism, Arte Povera, Land Art, and Conceptual Art —the most radical among them all. Conceptual art proposed the dematerialisation of work and the preponderance of idea over materialisation.
These days, Sculpture is more an event than procedure
Art is a very powerful weapon. As an artist, I bear in mind the responsibility of having that power in my hands. Art is a means of transforming the “I” and “the other”.
From those approaches that focus on issues of identity and gender, I see Sculpture as a bridge between the self and the world with a direct impact on society.
My work is born from a place of questioning, where I assume the oscillation between two positions:
- My commitment to life (as a human being and as a woman)
- The search for coherence with myself (as a woman and as an artist).
I conceive “creation” as a double and indivisible link that unites “thought” and “action”.
My works are a bridge between the “I” and the “world” seen through a social context. There is a full involvement of myself in them. They reflect the vital and conceptual positioning that I assume in the reality in which I am immersed.
The title of the exhibition:
… NO, NOT YET…
It defines a link that has the maximum opening: it is a link where the before and after are unknown.
By projecting themselves into the absences, the readers-spectators complete these gaps with their experiences.
… NO, NOT YET… expresses a double negation that is an affirmation of a contained action.
The word Yet withholds time, and the suspension points (…) at the beginning and the end (…) dilate and stop the sentence.
… NO, NOT YET…
It involves pleading, supplicating, praying…
Persistent plea… Infinite praying…
My artistic work focuses on the space defined by the contradictions originated in the search for “identity”.
In the first room, several works are presented as part of the project “Distancias y Abismos” [Distances and Abysses], which was presented in 2007 in a large exhibition named Pese al Paso del Tiempo [Despite the Passing of Time], in Salamanca (in five rooms) when I turned 50. The works of the project “Distancias y Abismos” focus on the always conflictive relationship between the Me & the You, in search and construction of the autonomy of one’s own.
On the front wall, there will be a large format work made of blood red vinyl, named
SOMOS mujeres y ESTAMOS aquí.
The main supply is the word; it contains around 1,380 terms:
- WE ARE (STATE): (690 words in feminine and plural, in alphabetical order).
10 blocks with 69 words each.
- WE ARE (EXISTENCE): (690 words in feminine and plural, in alphabetical order).
10 blocks with 69 words each.
Some questions regarding the text that conducts the performance:
The 690 terms related to STATE and the 690 terms related to EXISTENCE have been extracted from the Dictionary of the Spanish Language. They have been selected from among 12,012 words starting with the letter “A”.
The letter “A” is the one that includes and defines the feminine gender (at the end of words) in the Spanish language.
In this text, each word begins with the capital letter “A”, and all the 1,380 terms end in feminine and plural.
SOMOS mujeres y ESTAMOS aquí was also my first performance and it was carried out as a prayer, an audible recitation where:
- declamation was introduced in prayer and in affirmation
- dematerialization was shaped with will
- procession became a demonstration
In this performance, the chain of words shaped our litany… Throughout this action, the sonority of the pronunciation eliminated the materiality of words as in a mantra, it dissolved the meanings and it appeared as energy.
When this work is materialized into an installation, it is embodied in blood red vinyl and shaped in two parts. Both parts should be seen at the same time (one in front of the other).
The project SOMOS mujeres y ESTAMOS aquí is a work that is text, and it is text that is a work:
It is word, in a written text.
It is text, in its record in a book.
It is drawing, in its incursion on the paper.
It is painting, in its irruption on the wall.
It is sculpture, in its intervention on architecture.
It is installation, in its integration on the wall.
It is action, in its declamation and representation during a performance.
SOMOS mujeres y ESTAMOS aquí is definition… prayer, recitation, litany… word, silence...
We pursue the apprehension of the meaning of anything that cannot be defined; although in this work we have tried to do so through the pronunciation of numerous voices…
SOMOS mujeres y ESTAMOS aquí is speech… enunciation, pronunciation, manifestation… text, dematerialization...
This project has succeeded in concretizing one of my essential aims in my works, which is to reach the maximum of meaning with the minimum of incarnation and presence.
In the centre of the first room, we present a floor sculpture installation made specifically for this exhibition. The work is named Destierros XVI [Exiles XVI]; it is 17 meters long and it is built with more than 200 elements that dialogue with the architecture and the place. The project “Destierros” reflects on concepts related to the wandering being, to traveling without destination, to abandonment, distance, loneliness, absence, loss…
At the entrance of the second room, we see the work which gives name to this exhibition: … No, Aún No… [… No, Not yet…], made of gold vinyl. It has been conceived as a concentric and circular labyrinth, which forces the viewer to make a continuous visual journey. The recitation of the written word welcomes each reader into the web of emotional interdependencies. Thus, the untiring repetition and the never-ending circularity of the text make the plea persist… in a continuous prayer…
“… No …Aún… no me dejes… No …Aún … No…”
[“… No… Not yet… Don't leave me… No… Not yet… No…”]
Lack of love and Abandonments
The second room is arranged through 11 diptychs from the project: “El Arte Sana / El Arte Cura” [Art Heals / Art Cures], series: “Autorretratos” [Self-Portraits]. These works have been elaborated specifically for this exhibition at MARCO.
They are eleven self-portraits linked to texts that promise an introspection into the dark areas.
We discern perplexed and imprecise faces in the silhouettes... Those faces do not have a name, but the author recognizes herself in them.
The self-portrait is pretty much an X-ray of the spirit, which helps us to unveil and think about the self... about ourselves.
In these X-rays resound echoes and negations which embrace the dark evergreen of hope: they lead us to see ourselves as we are:
Blackness tattooed on the soul