Sueños
Sala de Arte Meridiano
2007

Of twilight and other mirrors
We are such stuff as dreams are made on” This phrase, attributed to William Shakespeare and often quoted by Borges, is a certain source of inspiration for the artist Eloísa Ibarra. But what kind of dreams does this installation refer to? Creative poetic dreams like the ones yearned for by Gaston Bachelard? Diurnal remnants and repressed desires as explained by psychoanalysis? Complex psychic phenomena re-exhibited in a new, more rational and concrete light?

[Interweaving
wispy threads of the soul
life dreams]

Each of the eight white pillows displayed on the wall are encrusted with eight black chests or boxes, each holding and exhibiting small objects made from paper, stone, metal, fabric, glass and mercury. Objects rescued from far-flung places.

The way in which these simple elements appear arranged in the minimum space that lodges them suggests an earlier order, barely glimpsed: a nonlinear, sibylline narrative, inhabited by contradictory sensations of cold and heat, pain and tenderness, calmness and loss. On the opposite wall, facing the pillows and their boxes, eight prints mark a counterpoint, a translation of languages, where the engraving, neatly severed from its secular tradition, acts as a repository of mirrored syntax. As though the very elements contained in the boxes had -in a strange indirect or deferred manner- been imprinted on the paper and thus forged another image of themselves: the nails could have perforated the white sheet opposite and the fine fabrics could have struck with China ink to form a subtle and labyrinthine root-like pattern. It is not exactly a mirror image process, but rather, a reflective distance in which the observer intervenes, literally and physically. The visitor becomes caught between the two lines of fire -or gazes- that are unleashed from wall to wall. To the reverse order employed in the printing process –from the die to the paper the drawing changes direction from right-to left– this opposition of plane and volume is added, together with third and final instance: a book containing eight haikus and eight small prints. The short texts in exact metrics written by Ibarra allow themselves to be read sequentially as statements, or more precisely, like poetic coordinates that illuminate the image etched onto the book's pages.

Ancient ghosts
encounter a space
where they can dwell

The literary device adds a movement in time to the installation, syncopated and elliptical, evoking certain dreamlike states. Eight pillow-objects, eight prints and a book make up seventeen pieces: the number of syllables that a haiku must contain. More than a symbolic line of thought or a particular aesthetic, Ibarra’s rigorous self-imposed system seems to transmit emotional fidelity. The exhibition owes a great deal to Nelson Ramos, but that “great deal” is connoted –presented– through certain colors, a certain compositional style, an almost obsessive formal austerity. Hushed tributes, secret voices, beings glimpsed on the verge of slumber. Could this installation be revealing the twilight states of the soul? Hypnagogic images crossing the boundaries of wakefulness?

Mute whispers
of forgotten shadows
rest on the pillow

Pablo Thiago Rocca
Exhibition Curator

* Los haikus citados pertenecen a E. Ibarra

Nelson Di Maggio
Diario La República
19 de marzo de 2007

Espacio onírico
V Bienal Internacional de Arte Siart
Museo Nacional de Arte La Paz, Bolivia.
2007

Colección Fundación Siart, La Paz, Bolivia.

Is there or not
the dream I forgot
before dawn?

J.L. Borges

Satélites de amor 01, A través de los espejos (de ida y de vuelta)
Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV), 2007.
Performer: Giovanna Martinatto
Curated by Alfredo Torres