Year 13

Otro es el río que persigo

I

When the wind passes through the metal strips, when it brushes the iron stem that sprouts from the ground and produces hoarse sounds, we are being warned of an apparently invisible dominion of nature.

When the secret force of the air stirs the leaves of the olive tree and moves its branches until the bond with its fruit is undone, causing it to fall, we are being shown that it is gravity that dominates its destiny.

The air whispers and sets objects in motion. On the fine silver metal, the rays of the late afternoon sun also rest, skittish, and are sent off in all directions. The wind also lifts dust, moves sand, and accompanies them with a murmur that shifts from right to left, from top to bottom, without a precise trajectory.

A tiny event, an insignificant whim, has the capacity to alter an entire network of relationships.

II

Otro es el río que persigo is an installation by Cristina Mejías composed of four dark bodies, thin sculptures that sprout from the ground, and an iron arch that rises from the earth and lands on a stump. It functions like a composition, like a score in which each part affects the others, which also influence the environment in which they are found: a clayey terrain, filled with olive trees and fennel plants.

This installation takes its title from El Inmortal, a story by Jorge Luis Borges published in 1947, in which Marco Flaminio Rufo, protagonist and narrator, tells us how he advances «through fearful and diffuse deserts» toward the City of the Immortals. During this journey, Rufo finds the secret river thanks to which men achieve the longed-for perpetuity. Unwittingly, the protagonist drinks from its waters and becomes immortal. However, despite sharing his new condition with them, he soon finds himself surrounded by beings who are not to his liking. The same happens to him when he encounters the promised city, a place with disordered architecture. He then decides to seek «another river», one that will return his transient quality.

In Borges’ story, immortality reveals itself as a curse, since death offers each of our acts the possibility of being the last. The text also speaks of a moment of transition between the expectation of a situation that every man strongly desires, and the mismatch produced by its attainment. And any narration, in addition to being the art of sharing experiences, places us in that space between the things that are and the things that happen, between objects and events, between words and things.

So, we ask ourselves: What happens in that interval between expectation and encounter with the real? What is the real potency, its reach, between the narration about a distant and imaginary land and the encounter with the materiality of the piece and the common land?

The project that Cristina Mejías presents in this setting also imposes a journey on us. It takes us to the top of a hillside and, just like what happens to Rufo, the protagonist of Borges’ story, it offers us the opportunity to imagine, to speculate, as we advance, about what we will find there. Dark shadows appear wandering among the olive trees, subtle lines peeking through the vegetation, which awakens sounds that, activated by the wind, flow among us. This journey invites us to ruminate, an act that the thinker Andrea Soto Calderón defines as a practice that involves «chewing something that returns from the cavities of the stomach, to break it down once more». The path gives us the opportunity to perform this movement, to realize that long things are difficult to grasp at a glance.

III

Otro río es el que persigo is a continuous proposal with the artist’s previous practice. Cristina Mejías has always been listening to the stories told to her in the places she visits, weaving them together and, thanks to them, creating the shape of things to come. She is a maker. Her practice is a concatenation in which she rescues elements that interest her from previous projects, incorporating the experience extracted from the contexts in which she develops them. Mejías works with what is open, with what moves and has its own strength, even if we want to control it.

Text written by Blanca del Río

Fotos: Elsa García & Montse Solà