LITURGIeS of ecstasy
"The African-Americans, without a doubt, does not abandon himself to introspection like a Saint Teresa to describe to us the different dwellings of her "inner castle". He, however, has another language, which allows him to express the richness or complexity of his yearning soul. between the arms of the gods is the language of gestures." BASTIDE, Roger. The dream, the trance, and the madness.
“It is necessary to witness the gestures, the contortions, the features, the disordered and violent movements to which the blacks give themselves in their sacred dances, during consecutive hours, during days and nights. One must have seen them soaked in sweat, that the hands of their companions or those designated for that purpose dries every moment with large towels; it is necessary to have seen them like this, with their dresses soaked in sweat, dancing, dancing again, dancing all the time, to have an idea of what this strenuous exercise in communication can be; to know its power, which, far from bringing them down, excites them more and more.” ORTIZ, Ferdinand. Los pretos brujos. [free translation]
Based on these two references, the series Liturgies of Ecstasy portrays a female and black body discourse crossed by ancestral memories and symbologies, in its process of manifestation and updating of language gestures as a practice of communication, self-expression, connection with the past, with you and with the invisible.
It is important to highlight that the pre-colonial Amerindian and African communities did not privilege specific types of language, as the European colonizer did about write and vision. On the contrary, non-whites used their senses and the whole body indiscriminately for this purpose.
Liturgies of Ecstasy rescues this unlimited cosmoperception, by trying to visually narrate the impalpable vortex of signs manifested through the body connection. For that, it uses fluid, ethereal, and almost incorporeal techniques and aesthetics in the construction of the images that compose it.
