JULIA LLERENA

Some time ago, I came across a collection of poems in which I found the following statement: you can make a poem out of anything. In theembroidered verses of Julia Llerena's works we find plummetingsyllables, hands modeling words and the desire to turn them into matter.Gliph of thread that before being thread was machine and, prior to it, avoice, a breath. Breath: warmth and shelter. Sheets, ceramics andbroken logs that enumerate the intimate geography of the artist andinvite us to be accomplices of this day-to-day lair in which languageunfolds.

According to Barthes, text means weave. A weave behind which the meaning (the truth) is found, more or less hidden, and where weaccentuate the generative idea that the text is produced, it is workedthrough a perpetual interlacing, in which the subject is lost and undoneimmersed in it. A well-executed embroidery is identical on both ofits sides, so in this technique the importance falls on the finish onthe back, what is hidden from view. However, if what is embroidered is awriting, reversibility is impossible or, in any case, it can only occurfrom illegibility. The doing of the unweaving, transferred to themaking of the text, recalls that all writing implies un-writing. Thethree large pieces that we find in the room do not hide the puncturedback of the canvas; they rather invite in their meandering arrangementto a bodily reading of the verses - now adulterated echoes - containedin the backing. A journey in which the alleged intelligibility of thehidden face does not influence because everything is shown; there is noorthodox character or symbol, nor (in)correct reading order. Theartist's action, then, is not circumscribed in a merely additiveprogression; undoing what is done is part of the narrative that is builtbetween the warp and the weft, on which an imprint remains; hole andtrace of thread or ink, phantasmagoria of the blank sheet. In theseworks, the embroidered verses on linen are not configured as a merehandwriting artifact, nor is there a concern to offer any translation:there is a pulse to repress the text as such, addressing the poeticgesture as the action of decoding and rewriting the literal inscriptionof the words. The poetic trespasses the appearance and becomes materialfact that occupies the mouth and throat, overflowing the exclusivity ofthe page. The poem is born in the breath, a harmony linked betweenthe babbling, the murmur and the verb. The phonemic is manipulated in asimultaneous exercise of fragmentation and condensation throughelectronic intervention. Using the spectrometer, the verses are turnedinto failed calligrams, fleshy topographies that capture the tactile andgranular intensities of the poems selected by the artist.

A spectrogram is the graphic representation of sound frequencies, even those imperceptible to the human ear. The origin of the term has anambivalence that transports us to what emerges and is perceptiblethrough the eye and, also, to what is invisible to it; to an elusive,ghostly presence. In these pieces, the use of the spectrogram is notenunciated as a technical fetish, but rather from Julia's interest indeploying the evocative potentiality of absence; the voids that shetends to introduce in a large part of her production, both installativeand sculptural. Spirits and memory. Here appears, the vision in the roomof some wooden branches, whose rhythm is interrupted by cavities filledwith glass; or porcelain vases supported by pieces of clear glass.There is no desire for restitution, nor repair in the holes that gothrough the works. The operation is simple: to displace the antagonismbetween the hollowness and the abundance, directing the value towardsthe fragility that sustains the fragments that make up a whole. Lifehappens in the interstices. Nothingness is not a crude absence, but theinfinite fullness of openness. The hollow is where the void rests and,in turn, excavation. Imitating the methodology of the poems embroideredon linen, I proceed to use the voices of other authors, thus summoningthe poet Heather Christle and Didi-Huberman. The first, affirms thatwriting poems is not very different from drilling a hole that othershave previously made; the second indicates that sculpting is likeexcavating the earth. In both cases, artistic practice involves rollingup your sleeves: the search requires entering the hole, the void, as anexercise in non-linear anamnesis. To unearth is to extract a treasure, avestige, a corpse; but it also consists of preparing the land, tillingit into new forms that contain in themselves the becoming of memory,projecting it towards future growth.

Caen sílabas negras is a loose verse by Gamoneda, the only poem fragmentthat is revealed with written words –through typographic elements– inthe gallery. Titles always have weigh. The fall contains uncertainty,which entails a discovery. There is something that precipitates, thatseems to descend when understanding appears throughout our lives, as ifthe collapse - and its blow - were a trance towards knowledge andlearning. This exhibition is an invocation to muffle the impact of thefall, making the excavation a caress: With the hands the words areformed / With the hands and in its concavity[7] / digs the earth of thespeech[8]. These verses immersed in the cloth, the deep holes that weform and leave; this perpetual intertwining of whisper, crystal, sutureand air, may be an attempt to touch the thought or the unborn tongue.

Raquel G. Ibáñez