Opposite poles sprout and become visible in her hectic work. She presents us dry, moist, mutant events… She portrays some sensations. She leaves traces that emit signals.
The mist prevails in her poetic without being (physically). We presaged it; the mist as a metaphor or tactic to pretend something that can be. The mist as a barrier that surrounds us and places us before the abyss, because it does not allow us to see the perspective of common landscape. It is white, pure, cold, (in) visible. And of course: it is not always as it is. It arises in specific environments.
The mist has been a resource from the tip on the artist. It has been without being. Some of Elizabet Cerviño´s framed fabrics for Villa Manuela (1) have hidden in their lower portions something we do not suspect because we do not perceive clearly. Llanto de la ceremonia I (2013) and Llanto de la ceremonia II (2013) are also symbols-portraits of the mist that, as an idea, we also felt in the other works of frayed fabric, as technique – that she entitled Viso del derrame -. There are three large parts, white, pure, abstract, “empty”. And with vertical marks (lines) that, due to gravity, have fallen, fall. However, the mist has been just a moment in the almost ends of the gallery in its museographic logic for the exhibition Paisaje 360o, which has marked other horizons: dispossession, mutation, transparency. States to which she should (know how to) reach and present with evidence.
We see a lot and clearly in works like El peso de repetir (2013): symbolic and maternal installation, pointing to every origin and at the beginning to femininity, from the sphere (tiny): egg, prefiguring life, i.e., movement and continuity. But this time, there have been different eggs; multiplied, equidistant along the ground (sand). Of them all, only few would have success, if we consider the biological principle of reproduction of certain plants that produce thousands of seeds, as a strategy of survival of only a few. Therefore, minimum life would sprout from such eggs resulting in the necessary (other) Bautizo (2013): she, now as a symbol-artist, dressed in a long, soft dress that gets moisten when touching the water, exceedingly, allowing seeing the imprint of female curves and protuberances. And more: gestures, moods, reactions … She, then as the artist-being, would be stripped of the dampened clothes, already heavy, and would advance: naked. She would escape. Could it have been?
In the gallery remained the imprint of five photographs of wet body (right there, before, again) as complement and purpose of the piece Bautizo that is as painting and sketch when opening the catalog. Bautizo is, as performance, the succession or second moment of the mist transmuted into water that falls to show the other (large) landscape and make us read-what I presume- verses by the artist, well located next to the drawn sketch of Bautizo. And although the dress has remained rolled, resting on the floor, the presence of the young artist is very vital. The undone mark weighs. That fabric –white and real- has been the best signal-impression. So, maybe, “it has fallen more than the water.”
(1) To celebrate her personal exhibition Paisaje 360o. Villa Manuela Gallery, Havana, January-February 2014.
