Imaginary Drawings and Other Landscapes
Thursday, 10 April 2014 17:12
Written by Aurora Noreña
Using fragments of plants, I attempt to reconstruct territorial and emotional notions of the country from which my father was exiled over 60 years ago.
The series of collages, entitled Imaginary Drawings and Other Landscapes is based partly on a nostalgia that I share with my father –because of his exile-(1), and partly on the need to solve the mystery of his life even before his exile (one’s parents’ past is always enigmatic).
It is not the events themselves that most intrigue and interest me but rather the settings where they took place, in other words, the poly-sensory data of those experiences (which make us feel that we recover them: as when we hear a song and relive an event).
My methodology involves creating imaginary spaces that touch on those others in a tangential fashion.
Leaves from different trees collected during my travels in Spain serve as a fragile point of contact between both existential environments, since they belong both to the plant imaginary of pre-exile (since they correspond to the same geographical territory) and to my imaginary construction.
The link in this case is constructed on the basis of touch. The visual texture of the leaves and the various relationships within the two-dimensional drawing space create a haptic sensation that can transport us to other moments we have experienced, or even not experienced.
With cuts, dies, patterns and seams, and texts, de-construction and records of personal experience in these territories, I cross through the new places to explore and feel them.
Although the process yields no certainties, it allows me to speculate on the areas where my father lived, which he stores in his memory (which are also transformed by time and games of longing.
•
(1) I mean that my nostalgia is a kind of need to experience the feelings of others, in this case my father’s, as a result of which I move or leave the center of my reality to assume another reality.
Using fragments of plants, I attempt to reconstruct territorial and emotional notions of the country from which my father was exiled over 60 years ago.
The series of collages, entitled Imaginary Drawings and Other Landscapes is based partly on a nostalgia that I share with my father –because of his exile-(1), and partly on the need to solve the mystery of his life even before his exile (one’s parents’ past is always enigmatic).
It is not the events themselves that most intrigue and interest me but rather the settings where they took place, in other words, the poly-sensory data of those experiences (which make us feel that we recover them: as when we hear a song and relive an event).
My methodology involves creating imaginary spaces that touch on those others in a tangential fashion.
Leaves from different trees collected during my travels in Spain serve as a fragile point of contact between both existential environments, since they belong both to the plant imaginary of pre-exile (since they correspond to the same geographical territory) and to my imaginary construction.
The link in this case is constructed on the basis of touch. The visual texture of the leaves and the various relationships within the two-dimensional drawing space create a haptic sensation that can transport us to other moments we have experienced, or even not experienced.
With cuts, dies, patterns and seams, and texts, de-construction and records of personal experience in these territories, I cross through the new places to explore and feel them.
Although the process yields no certainties, it allows me to speculate on the areas where my father lived, which he stores in his memory (which are also transformed by time and games of longing.
•
(1) I mean that my nostalgia is a kind of need to experience the feelings of others, in this case my father’s, as a result of which I move or leave the center of my reality to assume another reality.