There are many emotions my father inspires in me; from resentment and contempt to admiration and gratefulness; from pity to pride, from anguish to hope. Opposite feelings nest in my heart all at once while different experiences layer one over the other as years pass by. I believe we all are complex mixture, walking paradox. This installation at the end is homage to my father.https://www.youtube.com/embed/rYX34_putRg?feature=oembedLa Nina de sus Ojos
I always felt that a little 3-year-old decided my life; that I was to be an artist. It happened exactly when she grabbed a pen and a piece of paper. No questions, no doubts, no options. Drawings of fairies, winged horses, and diverse children characters were so many times practiced from then on, that as my father says, they still live in the memory of my hands.
APPLE OF HIS EYE consists of a video, of the act of drawing, and the drawings on the wall. The video is an interview of my father speaking about his hopes and dreams of me as an artist. The drawings on the wall are done with markers and without the need of pencils or sketches, exactly as I learned when I was a child under his guidance. The measurements of the installation vary depending on the amount of wall and time. A 5′ by 8′ area of wall can be covered with drawings in a day.
The act of drawing in APPLE OF HIS EYE is performance. The hand dancing over the surface of the wall creates an imaginary world. Drawing in front of an audience is an invite to the public’s participation in that world. The people watching expect to be surprised, provoked, or entertained; sometimes they even actively get involved by requesting a particular image on the wall or on a piece of paper. A communication is usually established because at the end, we are all still linked by childhood.
This installation begins with a father speaking of his expectation, unbreakable faith and complete devotion to his daughter. And it tells of a little child, who co-existing in a grown ups body, still lives on, separately, uniquely as an idea born in memory yet preserved and unchanged like layer of strata. I am still that child, and the drawing on the wall, is a proof of her actual existence.
At the close of exhibition, the drawings on the wall will be painted over and returned to memory.
