2021
Print on burnt pvc and steel plate resting on bricks.
Installation size: 222 x 247 x 5 cm.
Plate size: 30 x 50 x 0,2 cm
Video: 9’45’’.
““The more light one reaches, the more darkness one discovers;
wounded darkness protests against the light.
One cannot step up without also taking a step down;
no one can reach heaven if he has not passed through hell”.
Satprem, “Sri Aurobindo. The adventure of Consciousness”.
The word queima means to burn. The intent of the work is to implement a symbolic process of purification of pain, through a ritualistic procedure, which refers to the shamanic healing practices present in the native civilizations of the Amazon forest.
The ritual is understood as the invocation of a divine power through which a purification and cure of the soul from what hinders and oppresses it towards its own path of freedom.
In the sacred creative process, visible in the video, the work of art is what it does not or rather the evaporation of pain, the space of absence between the furrows and cracks of Larry Nassar’s face. What appears and cannot disappear is the body marked and purified by pain.
Larry Nassar was a doctor/physiotherapist for the U.S. national artistic gymnastics team until 2015, when he was accused and tried for raping 255 female athletes minors during his sessions. The trial concluded in 2018 with a sentence of 175 years in prison.
Larry Nassar’s face mirrors the pain of every victim. A reversal occurs, a transfiguration, the face is always the same, no longer the body of the victim but the body of the perpetrator. What is purified is not the individual, but the gaze on the object of suffering. One learns to look at pain. In the act of observing, of conscious presence, purification takes place.
The artistic process is the synthesis/mirror of the process of observation and purification of pain, the work of art is the objectual and symbolic manifestation of creative and purifying energy.
The number of faces is 70 which, together with the plate, make up 71.
In the esoteric tradition 7 indicates the ashes, 1 indicates rebirth and life. Within many traditions and cultures of mythological, esoteric and alchemic nature the number 71 corresponds to the symbol of the Arabian phoenix, symbol of regeneration.
Rebirth takes place through the phases of the phoenix’s renewal: immersion in water, fire in fire, and rebirth (a procedure similar to the one the artist used to produce the work). The element with which the phoenix is associated is the Spiritual Fire that purifies and has a dual power of destruction and regeneration. Destructive in the manifestation of pain, regenerative in the awareness and overcoming/evaporation of suffering.