Leaves and Seashells
I always liked fables for their simplicity to express complexity. Knitting from different standpoints, different media and different expressions as if they were strands of sting. Fable like metaphors in different languages.
In this work, I reflect on our compulsive tendency of materializing fleeting thoughts and moments. We are obsessed with recording our lives in the form of tangible inanimate objects, because of our strange phobia of death. Mortality is still one of the greatest sources of human fears. There is a natural desire in us to overcome death and oblivion, tied to the need to pass on our memories. This desire for immortality can be seen both in the individual dimension, as a fear to forget and to be forgotten — in reality or even a transferred one — which leads to the necessity of creating memorials, taking pictures, writing autobiographies, posting even the most insignificant accomplishment on social media or storing everything in digital memories.
Scarce are the plants in my land. The meager soil of an eroded plain. Feeble the fruit that is born. Stingy the veins of the crops. Identity: built upon the pillars of reminiscence.
What a nice winter we have so far I have been able to recollect so many leafs. I was in constant fear that the snow would come and erase their existence. A few times the snow came, hitting without hesitation. Normally they rustle and rot. Come close to the soil. Become black and then are covered in white. Didn´t happen this time.
When the fear of humanity dying out as such is added to preexistent fear of self-mortality, well we have a very nice mixture of worries to add to our daily lives. Pointless memorials, pointless drawings pointless floppy discs that no computer can read. Sad that to preserve my collection of leaves I cover their golden hue in a white acrylic resin. The color of the snow that would have wiped their structures in the first place, had it come.
Leaves and seashells have a very interesting architecture. Funny is that trees do not worry about the ephemeral nature of their leafs for they live so long and in contrast the sea slug takes pride in his craft for his home can last for centuries before turning into grains of sand.
