Untitled. From the series Renascere

In Latin, “to be born again”.

“Renascere” blurs the imaginary line between the microcosm and macrocosm and the concrete boundary between life and death.

The work, a bodily poetry narrated in two chapters “Cineris” and “Porta”, materializes in video and photographic records.

It is a metaphorical story – with a certain autobiographical tint – that aims to reflect the metamorphoses that every human being experiences throughout their life. It addresses the notion that everything dies to then be reborn transformed.

In “Porta”, from a vessel symbolizing the vulva, a body constructs itself and gives birth to itself. It traverses the portal, “porta” in Latin, and highlights the recurrence of the life cycle.

In “Cineris”, there is no beginning or end; it moves from life to death and from death to life. A body burns to consume itself and resurfaces renewed.

“CINERIS” (from Latin, “ceniza” – ashes)
Like a Moebius strip, “Cineris” moves from life to death and from death to life. It does not define what happens first because, in cyclical terms, there is no beginning or end. To burn, to consume oneself and the resurge, undergoing transformation, is part of the symbolism and metaphor of this work. Ash represents the destruction and disappearance of something old to make way for something new and revitalized. In “Cineris”, a renewed body emerges, which is not different from the one that was incinerated, but also not the same.
The work manifests the transience of life and, at the same time, the small deaths that each human undergoes throughout it.

“PORTA” (from Latin, “puerta” – door)
Porta in Latin means door. Shaping one’s own life is the proposal of this work, which presents a body that gives birth to itself and, therefore, forms itself in the same way. Struggling and taking advantage of the malleability of clay, that is, the nature of one’s own nature, it is the hands that shape the limbs, torso, and the rest of the figure.
The idea that human beings come from clay is a notion present in various ancient cultures around the world, from Egyptian and Greek to Judeo-Christian.
In “Porta”, everything emerges from a vessel symbolizing a vulva, and the cyclical becomes omnipresent in the recurrence of generating the channel of life, the opening door to the outside world, and the potential of the body that sprouts from that portal.
The strength of the work lies in not defining but traversing that path of repetition and persistent life.

María Lightowler – Curator.