LUCÍA VERGARA

Lucía Vergara is among those individuals who understand existence as a pathtowards knowledge, a space for the exploration of the paradox of life and death. Her innate curiosity and interest in the psycho-spiritual and the unconscious have led her to record daily, for more than ten years, her dreams and the visualizations generated during her meditative practice. This exhibition —Lucía’s first, and her first collaboration with Alzueta— stems from the personal work that has allowed her to connect with her fears and break through the dark threshold of what is denied and repressed, in order to access new forms of creativity.

The exhibition is composed of textile pieces that accompany daily activities—jackets, shirts, vests, trousers, shoes or bedding —and canvases, all made from old linen fabrics found while travelling, often in the form of bedsheets. The pieces are a nod to the artists’ interest for intimacy and private spaces. Vergara colours these fabrics with natural dyes, achieving a range of soft and muted tones with subtle nuances that evoke organic matter. She cuts pieces of fabric and uses hand stitching as a processual form of drawing, allowing for spontaneity, accident, and imperfection, creating compositions drawn from her personal imagination.

In a sense, Lucía proposes a subjective interpretation of the alphabet. Each garment is dedicated to a letter of the Spanish alphabet, in which the initial isrepresented along with motifs that begin with the same letter, chosen from herparticular universe: snake, tortoise, pear, mouse, insect, zodiac, Kali (Hindu goddess associated with death, time, destruction and transformation), eye,volcano, cherub, hand, chair... illustrating the twenty-seven characters. The pieces are arranged in the space like a dream that invites immersion, without logical order and without adherence to any rules. This project alludes to matters of learning and childhood, to forms of basic education, but also to gender. Embroidering letters has traditionally been a way to practice stitches, while also serving as a means to introduce reading and writing, especially for girls, whose access to other forms of education was restricted due to gender bias, class, or domestic expectations.

Also on display, is a series of canvases made using the same technique. which recreate suggestive and dreamlike scenes, and through their fragmentary narrative convey messages that transcend verbal language. In her work there is a deep interest in symbols and in the emotions associated with them, beyond their intelectualisation. In times of technological frenzy and veneration of polish and refinement, Vergara champions what is imperfectly handmade, this delight in textures and tactile sensations, seems to invite us to eroticism, commotion, and transcendence.

Her artistic process is nurtured by calm. She sits down to sew, and the images begin to take shape. This intersection of doing—with the hands, the mind, and the heart—becomes a space to experiment with sensations, intuitions, and ideas, carrying the freshness offered by the innocence of childhood.

The construction of narrative through sewing, used as a means for storytelling and documentation, dates back to ancient times. It is no coincidence that thewords text and textile share an etymological root, nor that of the Spanish “coser y cantar” (sewing and singing) tradition in communal sewing sessions. It is also worth mentioning the powerful association of sewing with deities and figures from Greco-Latin classical mythology, such as Arachne, Athena, the Fates, Ariadne, or Penelope. Likewise, there is Ixchel, the Mayan goddess of textile work, fertility and the moon, a motif that appears in several of the works and, —not by chance— in the title of the exhibition. The magnetic satellite symbolizes the feminine, fertility, the duality of life and death, and constant transformation. Its gravitational force controls the tides, serving as an opaque and reflective element of the sun’s light, its opposite and complement. It represents hidden emotions, the unseen side of the psyche, unintegrated desires and fears, the night, imagination, fantasy and invisible processes.

The present exhibition is an ascetic and sensualist homage to intuition andimagination as forces that evoke worlds and visions. It appeals to the collectivesubconscious and the strength of what is unattainable, and at the same time tothe observation of what is natural, insignificant and worldly. It is a subjective andemotional pathway for the ordinary as a portal to access fear, death and love bymeans of the symbolic.

Maite Muñoz Iglesias