«Arts Illustrated Magazine» es definitivamente la mejor revista de arte contemporáneo que se publica en India. Desde que descubrí el primer número quedé fascinada por su rigor, su contenido y el tratamiento ético y estético de la información. Todos los meses la buscaba en lugares de venta muy exquisitos, como Odyssey o The Amethyst Room y pasear por sus páginas se convirtió para mí en una experiencia cercana a la respiración metafísica.
Hace poco más de dos meses, la Sub-editora de AI, Vani Sriranganayaki, se puso en contacto conmigo para realizar una entrevista sobre Arte y Diseño en la que hablamos sobre mi forma de concebir la relación entre ambas disciplinas a partir del trabajo realizado en «OPEN BEDS». Las preguntas fueron sensacionales y la entrevista ha sido publicada en el número de febrero coincidiendo con la Art Fair 2018 de New Delhi, un referente en el Arte Contemporáneo Asiático, lo que hace que la publicación tenga este mes un impacto especial.
Los fragmentos de entrevista seleccionados por el equipo editorial forman parte de un magnifico artículo de Praveena Shivram titulado «This Desing of Mine» en el que la autora pone en relación el trabajo realizado en «OPEN BEDS» con los trabajos del escultor Li Hongbo, la diseñadora gráfica Annushka Hardikar, la ilustradora Alicia Souza y la artista Ketna Patel.
Es para mí una satisfacción formar parte de Ai, porque supone una ampliación maravillosa del sueño Indio y como dice Praveena, «The exhibition is yet to come to India». Os dejo aquí la entrevista íntegra (en inglés) y os invito a adquirir y descubrir, online o en papel, esta esta maravillosa publicación.
Muchísimas gracias a todas las personas que lo hacéis posible.
TREMENTINA LUX
Imágenes cortesía de Ai. Collage de la autora.
«Arts Illustrated Magazine» is definitely the best contemporary art magazine published in India. Since I discovered the first issue I was fascinated by its rigor, its content and the ethical and aesthetic treatment of the information. Every month I looked for it in very exquisite places like Odyssey or The Amethyst Room. For me, walking through its pages became an experience close to metaphysical breathing.
Approximately two months ago, the Sub-Editor of AI, Vani Sriranganayaki, contacted me to made an interview on Art and Design, in which we talked about my way of understanding the relationship between both disciplines from the work we did in «OPEN BEDS«. The questions were sensational and the interview has been published in February’s Ai issue coinciding with the Art Fair 2018 in New Delhi, a reference in Contemporary Asian Art, which makes the publication have a special impact this month.
The interview fragments selected by the editorial team are now part of a magnificent article written by Praveena Shivram and entitled «This Desing of Mine». In this article, the author relates «Open Beds» to the works of the sculptor Li Hongbo, the graphic designer Annushka Hardikar, the illustratorAlicia Souza and the pop artist Ketna Patel.
It is a satisfaction for me to be part of Ai, because it is a wonderful extension of the Indian dream and as Praveena says, «The exhibition is yet to come to India». I leave here the full text of interview (in English) and I invite you to acquire and discover, online or in paper, this marvelous publication.
Thank you very much to all the people that make it possible.
TREMENTINA LUX
Images courtesy of Ai. Collage of the author.
You can find the article only in Ai Magazine. This is unpublished author text.
Interview full text by Arts Illustrated Magazine to Julia Navarro Coll. January 2018.
Ai. When each story is different and the experiences so varied, what was your one thought at all times to keep them connected, to keep the aesthetic energy of the piece intact?
JNC. This is a very interesting question because in “OPEN BEDS. And exhibition about the patriarchal rules of love” my thought is to give voice to 112 different people to talk freely about marriage in their own bedroom. In front of a camera, I have asked them to answer a single question, of course my own inquiry: Why did you get married? Or in opposite case: Why you don’t marry?
In the resulting Video Art work, all experiences are connected to the feelings and social mandates about sex and love, affiliated with the construction of patriarchal family model around the world. This is the original seed. This seed has within itself the acceptance without prejudices of the difference, with absolute respect for the expression of contradictions which born inside and outside people when they have to take a personal decision about sharing or not their emotional and sexual lives. This is the energy of the ethical coherence of the piece.
Meanwhile, the aesthetic coherence is achieved with style decisions and a clear structure able to contain infinite variations in its form. When I recorded the testimonies in more than one hundred bedrooms in India, I decided to use static and medium wide shot for all people. This decision made it easier for each bedroom, each object located in that room, each posture, each silence and each word, to take center stage, and match whole testimonies like only one in audience mind. The control of light, not limiting the time of the responses, inviting the people to speak their own language and not interfering in the sequence were also style decisions, which led into more than three hours Video Art.
Ai. If you had to imagine the space where design and art intersect, what would that space look like?
JNC. Following this way, I think OPEN BEDS exhibition placed on Valencia’s Almudin in Spain, was a good sample about intersection of Art and Design. OPEN BEDS exhibition is an artistic experience, that means to me to provide questions, not just answers. That is why I created with my colleague Cristina Cucinella, architect in Valencia, a unique space designed to produce in the audience clear meanings and perfect state of mind to receive and process controversial ideas about marriage.
The Almudin is a magnificent and old grain warehouse of XIV century, located in the old Muslim Alcazar of Valencia, near the Cathedral and nowadays turned into cultural heritage, managed by the City Council, whose public tender OPEN BEDS project won. In the design of the exhibition we played with four elements to make that our artistic intention became a true form: the Video Art, the Bed Cover, the lighting and the building.
We displayed the Video Art in two opposite screens like a couple of giants that dialogue in twelve languages in constant loop in the wide void of the room. Between both screens, we installed on the floor a 24 meter round bed cover handmade in India with Sarees, where people can sit, lie down, walk barefoot or to discover traditions and secrets. A tactile and interactive work of art made to touch and feel deeply the most ancestral Indian feminine energy. To balance the intangibles, we used the light, Indigo and white, the penumbra and the shadow. We summon the emptiness and the fullness, the sound and the silence, solar and lunar energy, the comfortable, and however uncomfortable loneliness, looking always in all of senses harmony within the contrast.
We chose white light to frame exactly the “Bed Cover” and Indigo blue light outside the circle with the aim of sacralizing the Stanza. Romantic love is always joined with passionate red, but sometimes marriage means live in a sacred but frozen way. Besides, the mystical connotations of blue are intense. In the past, Indigo color comes to Europe from India, is the sky in South Indian Hindu Temples, and the mantle’s Virgin in Catholic iconography. Indigo blue is precious and powerful, and new technologies use blue light to disinfect environments. Its apparent captivating beauty and peace can clean and kill.
On the other hand, the old and new technologies mixture is done between the “Bed Cover” which is colorful, organic, craft alive and however Art therapy result and the specular testimonies, almost phantasmagorical, recorded in high resolution and projected on flat rectangular screens. In addition, as a gift of destiny in the opening day Demeter’s Project with Elia Casanova Soprano, and Lixsania Fernández, Viola da Gamba, performed directly the most incredible music we can imagine, adding voice and soul to an immemorial opening season.
For me, the space that intersects Art and Design is the generous place where the flesh, the soul, the intention and the self-will to communicate come together in a revolutionary form.
Ai. If ideas come from the mind and inspiration from the heart, which one do you listen to more?
JNC. I do not know if the ideas come to me from my heart, from my mind or from the other side of the body, using me as a channel to build a new point of view on old issues in this real land. It is true that without previously working on knowledge, no one can be inspired and surely no one can be motivated to acquire new knowledge, sometimes undesirable, without a secret and inspiring motivation.
When OPEN BEDS idea came to me, I was living in a hotel room in India, for 3 months. Just before coming to India I got my PhD, in Spain, where I had been a university professor for 9 years, working on audiovisual communication, gender and colonialism studies at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. It was a very confusing time for me arriving to India and giving up my work and my independent lifestyle. During those months I met not only the local people, but also the international community based in Chennai and working for multinational companies. All families, including mine, were a veritable laboratory about gender division of labour, as well the roles of the driver and domestic workers. The courage and support of expatriate wives, qualified and committed friends, made it possible to start the project. Although at that time I could not imagine it, the OPEN BEDS project came to me because I was ready to do it. It was, without a doubt, the great field practice of nine years of intensive theoretical work.
In my opinion, when art is honest, it is born to transform people, relationships, language, and also to transform the artist and the work itself. To make ideas come true I always need to have a great effort of Faith on the way, be focused, be clear to follow the instinct, and use the good things and disturb things to make grow the seed. Definitely my creative experience, also based on Art Therapy values is to learn how to believe and accept the process when ideas, images or instructions to take actions, that can seem great or absurd, come to you.
Overall, I believe that if you are focused, love and universal energy provides you in every moment everything your soul needs to contribute to human progress.
Ai.What drives you – art for change or art for self-preservation?
JNC. Of course, for change, but it is not possible to change without worrying about self-preservation. Let me explain this idea with examples about of our collective work. When I decided with Nasima Murali to do the “Bed Cover” with Nandri Trust team, I knew that they are women who are learning how to be tailor, and never had the opportunity to perform a work as big, crazy and unpredictable as the “Bed Cover” art piece that I wanted. I went almost twice a week for six months to the Tailoring Institute in Mahabalipuram making thus the setting. We worked together, without speaking another common language than emotions, trust and sorority, it was funny, amazing and incredible time.
I have believed, with my eyes closed, in their capacity for self-preservation, their traditional knowledge, their incredible wisdom of Indian Culture and their power to understand the meaning of sewing and transmit their personal experiences about arranged marriage in the “Bed Cover”. I have used my intense experience of change in expatriation and also my knowledge of Art Therapy and artistic language to accompany them on the path of creation, providing them security, structures like the mandala or Rangoli, and instructions to transform that creative potential into an appropriate artistic form, to make it grow from zero to 24 meters in diameter. Together, we have used our dissimilar strengths and weaknesses to emancipate ourselves from our life circumstances, turning our insight of self-preservation into a powerful tool for improve our small life and maybe the life of more than 8.000 people that was visited the first OPEN BEDS exhibition.
Ai.What is the first thing you think about when you begin work on your creation?
JNC. Actually, at the beginning I try not to think. I just have to recognize the idea when it appears and give it credibility, which is not an small goal. When the idea becomes conscious and I believe it, I start acting without thinking too much. When ideas and results begin to be found in a tangible way, it is time to provide coherence and share the seed to make it grow. The effort we make with Arantxa Tarrero, our web master in www.openbeds.es, is related from the beginning with this purpose, to strengthen the idea, share it and see what happens when it comes into contact with otherness.
We live a similar process when we begin to work in the final video, with Patricia Merayo and Germán Gil Sanjuan our professional video-editors. When we met with more than four hours of footage it was necessary to take complex decisions and work hard in edition, translations and subtitles. Some people talked for a few seconds in French or Japanese, but others spoke for several minutes in Tamil, Korean or Spanish, but I could not cut anything. The objective of the project is not to become a film projected in a cinema. It is a Video Art that can be watched full or partially in an exhibition hall. So, we fragmented the testimonies and created a collage of voices based on equity, contrast and vital harmony. To generate the ordering of the fragments we used the intuition, adding landscape scenes taken in Chennai. Finally, there were audience sitting for three hours on the “Bed Cover”, day after day returning to watch several times the complete documentary.
This result is the first thing that I thought when I started OPEN BEDS. In sharing my multicultural experience between India and my Mediterranean land, overlapping short realities about romantic love and arranged marriage and make it exciting and intelligible for all cultures. Now it is my goal to bring it to India.
Ai. I am an artist-creator because…
JNC. I cannot avoid it. And because magical things happen when the creative and positive energy of many people moves in same direction. I think that creating art all together and rethinking our idea about how is the universal love, the world would be a better place to live.
“OPEN BEDS. An exhibition about the patriarchal rules of love”
Julia Navarro Coll and Cristina Cucinella.
Bed Cover: Nasima Murali and Nandri Trust Team.
Web Master: Arantxa Tarrero Briceño.
Video Editing: Patricia Merayo López-Huerta, Germán Gil Sanjuan.
Tamil-English counselor: Evelyn Charles.
Performance: Demeter’s Project, Elia Casanova, Lixsania Fernández.
With the support of City Council of Valencia.
Almudin of Valencia, Spain. July-October 2017. Extended until November 2017.
Chennai-Mahaballipuram-Valencia.
Full information and acknowledgments in: www.openbeds.es
Hashtag: #myopenbeds
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