Bonito Living

The Infinity of Eight

The idea of creating an exhibition for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2020, started in 2018, when maverick artist/curator Renee Rilexie invited 8 talented artists to be part of this collective show. My work for the exhibition focuses on the iconography of the eight or the infinite, as two co-existent spheres, representing a perfect balance between the spiritual and the material. Using collage and mixed media, I try to reveal  the visual expressions in which this perfect balance can be achieved and the potential of art for healing and spiritual development.  In particular, my work for this exhibition is rooted in the iconography of pre-columbian indigenous communities in South America, and my collages explore how shamans and healers traveled through these two spheres of the spiritual and the physical, with the help of rituals and the power of nature. In this sense, my work develops the notion of “psycho-magic” developed by Alejandro Jodorwosky and the way in which art can heal and provoke transformative reactions with audiences. As part of the exhibition I would like to invite audiences to co-create and co-heal through two main events: a workshop on “Intuitive Collage” and an interactive lecture on “animals and shamanism in pre-columbian indigenous culture”.

Symbolism

The idea was to explore the multi dimensions of the eight, as the infinite number, or as any other evocation or imagination it produced.  I was drawn to the image of the eight, the two parallel spheres, and was very much trying to explore its meaning. for that I was trying to understand the symbolism of eight: eight hours of the week, eight planets in the solar system, eight symbols for Buddhism, eight of march: international women day, etc.  The semiotic of the eight is rich and provided me with some basis to start playing around.

Collage:

I’ve been working with collage  inspired by Matisse and my dear friend Osvaldo Polo playful collages. Collage is the french name for a type of mixed media art, which literally means “to paste” (cola is the name of the glue in french) and became a popular form of art for the surrealists. Their idea was to subvert and question traditional and academic forms of art, by approaching the “ready-made”, the domestic objects, the oniric, the dreams and the irrational. Collage became a perfect vehicle for new forms of expression, and it was Picasso and Braque, who paste newspaper cuttings and stuff into their cubist paintings. However, the history of collage is much older, as proved by the magnificent exhibition of 400 years of Collage at the Scottish National Galleries (2019). Collage as a form of expression, can be found in the anatomical texts of German doctors in the XV century as well as folk art and embroidery. However, it is the Victorians, with their taste for Parlor Games who popularized collage as an accessible way of expression using manufactured papers and special kits designed to amuse the growing idle classes.

In a wider definition, collage is all what is assembled, put together, integrated, and that applies to may other artistic forms, including photography, installation, textile art, and design. For example, Peter Blake, the creator of the most iconic music cover of all times: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, is a leading force in this medium. Not only his work includes design, pop art, but also, installations, collections, dolls houses, paintings!

Collage and feminism:

for its very nature, is accessible and democratic, and it is a perfect medium  gender expression. In a recent book by Rebeka Elizegi, a number of artists talk about their relationship with collage, highlighting the magical power of collages in poking fun to established realities:  Blanca Ortiga elaborates: “In collage, elements are detached from their own meaning or form an autonomous meaning and area released from the concepts associated with them, because the meaning of one element is constructed in relation to the other elements around it.”

Further, the artists in this book highlight the contributions of collage to the “deconstruction of the [female] body and its political fictions” and the ways in which women artists bear the double exclusion: in economic terms and inequality, but also in the way in which the art world, where “not only the production criteria has been colonised, but also the way in which the world is looked at and value is attributed.”

This subversive and rather political approach to collage is one of the most interesting aspects I want to explore with my work. In fact, my installation Yonis: art and feminism of 2018 concerns actually a textile collage. In it I tried to celebrate the female body, while interrogating the ways in which patriarchal tries to  discipline, limit or manipulate the body.  I was inspired by Mary Beard’s lecture on “Women and Power“, as well as the wave of protests of the #MeToo movement, but also, I wanted to create something that was part of my heritage. I drew upon my work as botanic illustrator and my fascination with plants and flowers: nature female organs, vessels of life. The work is ongoing and initially I thought about bringing it to this exhibition.

As an artist, I am interested in the role of art for self-enquiry. I shall then acknowledge my position as a mestizo, foreigner, female, self-taught artist, as well as recognizing the privileges of my socioeconomic condition as an educated woman in a first world country.  Nonetheless, the question is valid due to the juxtaposition of identities: am I a Colombian speaking in English, using the language of collage to talk about my traditions and my own personal and spiritual journey?  Perhaps the idea of moving across different spheres and realm, as illustrated by the eight, can illuminate some of the thinking process that goes into the production/creation of my work.

Rituals, birds and shamanism

While thinking on the idea of the perfect balance between the spheres of the eight, and its spiritual symbology, I came across the book “Healing as Technology” a collection of interviews to shamans and healers of indigenous communities in Colombia by Barbara Santos. Once again, it was Osvaldo who started reading me excerpts from the book while I was working on the collage. Call this serendipity or magic, but while he was describing the ways in which the shaman or healer access the “cosmic computer” using birds feathers and plants as wifi codes, I started seeing the transits between those different world. In fact, I had been playing with the icons of pre-columbian culture, specially those depicting birds, so prevalent in First People myths from Alaska to Patagonia, passing through Mexico and of course Colombia.  I never get tired of visiting the Gold Museum in Bogota, and I am a sucker for learning about how plants and animals have been  integrated to the lives and beliefs of indigenous communities.  Before this, I have been working in a project called People+Palms with ethnobotanist Marta Lucia Prado, hence I was familiar with the use of plants. But it is after my visit to the eco-paradise of Juan Solito that my passion for birds was fired up. You know how things work… once you learn a language (specially a visual language) you start looking at things in a different manner and everything start to reveal what you are looking for.