Curaduría Juci Reis - Virtual
Solo show Paola Estrella
Mystery summons human beings to project existence, opening space for ritual to acquire time, matter (body), and expression. Understanding that reality as a central ethos is metaphysically conditioned by time, we can understand that the works recreated from the film document, A Parallel Reality, by artist Paola Estrella, allude to otherness manifested in a fantastic everyday life through hybrid creatures that act in an apolitical and decontextualized hierarchy and represent themselves in a timeless mythological manner.
“Otherness means "the quality of the other or the different" and, philosophically, "different character" metaphysically. We can say that otherness is the act of perceiving difference and that the "I" must coexist with others.”
Mutualism in Greek mythology, like the Minotaur, was conceived to extend the Greek imagination, the realm of otherness, of the other, of that which is most alien to humanity and its civilized, orderly, and rational world. Consider that the Greek myth that projects a human with a bull's head refers precisely to the act of existing in transformation, a metaphor for understanding our potential or our monsters. The torn and juxtaposed limbs of living species have a relevant and contextualized symbolism when philosophy gave meaning to human existence and its presence within nature.
Shower, 2020. Mixed media. 126 x 89 x 5 cm
The collection of works by artist Paola Estrella proposes a re-examination of a film object in order to interpret it. Beasts, Bunny, Flies on Holiday, Ice Queen, The Madwoman, The Witches, Musicians, Fish, Portrait 1911, and Shower compose a personal mythology within a contemporary reality. Human beings with the heads of birds, fish, dogs, wasps, rabbits, owls, and sheep ritualize everyday scenes. Removing the human head and replacing it with those of other animals opens up a reflection that goes beyond the mutualist reference to reflect the search for new identities and moral realities. An adversarial narrative of the transformation of ideas; an opening for the understanding of new forms of existence; a direct revision of the contemporary ethos.
Beings in analogy to metaphysical symbiosis, generating a double meaning in the current relationships between human beings and nature. The part of the human body depicted in the scenes is the head, which represents one of the body's vital organs, the seat of the soul or spirit manifested in matter and reason. Estrella invents bird women connected by species and gender, who transmute to negotiate another reality. The bird is a metaphor for reconnection on a meta-existential plane.
The scenes depicted in the works The Witches, Shower, and Portrait (1911) gradually deepen an almost indirect discourse, the ontological and contextual relationship between the artist and her works, who manifests herself as an observer of planned situations and at the same time as an active character. For example, in The Madwoman, the lights on her head conceive the three times of a woman who is beyond reality, a double meaning reflected in a mirror. The artist's unconscious in the work branches out at points of coincidence, giving rise to an invented everyday life. Another important point to mention in the collection of works is the reorganization of the pictorial scenes through a filmic metalanguage, which opens the possibility for the observer to self-interpret them.
Pez, 2020. Fotografía. 50 x 34 x 5 cm
Headless human beings directly lose their identity; the characters and everyday scenes can allude to any of us, in our cultural and moral state. Recreated through ritual, the images become part of an alternate cosmos, especially those most closely related to the realm of otherness: the women who hint at versatility are transformed into birds, insects, rabbits, owls, and dogs.
It is also important to add that the collection of works is based on the reorganization of pictorial scenes through a filmic language. The works included in the virtual exhibition represent the union of several interdisciplinary elements: music, costumes, choreography, poetry, set design, etc. (list of interdisciplinary elements).
The union of different artistic elements and resources suggests a discourse directly connected to the allegory of transformation; thus, when she represents animals seeking other forms of perception of moral and political structures, she stimulates our extrasensory potential. Otherness as a point of reference in Estrella's works constitutes a constant motif that alludes to a reinvention of myth in simultaneity.