L’OMBRA DEL SILENCI
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To make the visible I make myself invisible
(Es Tiempo, ed. La Garúa, 2022)
L’Ombra del silenci (The Shadow of Silence) is an exhibition in four acts, four singular spaces of the monumental complex of the Seu d’Ègara. Mayte Vieta offers us an evocative walk among lights, shades and darkness, a sensory experience in which the work interacts with the viewer and with time becomes a stone of the building.
The walk starts with the photographic installation Projectant un somni (Projecting a Dream). The images of a dreamed cosmos murmur to us, backlit. They speak to us of absences and presences, before the gothic retable of the room.
A few metres further on rises a wall of wire, shadow and penumbra. The dozens of birdcages of De su amada memoria (Of Beloved Memory) speak to us of falling out of love, of loneliness in the face of lived experiences, of the uneasiness and pain of loving and being loved, of our own fragility.
The sun is bright as we leave and it follows our steps to Saint Michael’s chapel. In the centre of the funerary chapel, imprisoned among the columns, the installation Bambi, animals dells temps (Bambi, Animals of the Times) awaits us. a deer, placed on the clean, sharp surface of the glass, is divided under the starry sky of stone as if it were in suspension.
Vieta accompanies us in our descent to the crypt. In El pont del sospir (The Bridge of Sighs) we are received by the silhouette of a nude body. Its organic forms, like roots, blend into the walls, the weight of time and memory. The silence is owing to that almost tangible point, while the light that filters through the divergent fissures of the jambs of the windowsill surrounds us, embraces, swallows us.
In this space of tranquillity we are received by the work L’Ombra del silenci. Two mirrors on the thresholds of the alabaster windows capture the brilliant image of the volatile particles of natural light. The absence becomes visible, suspended in the silence.
The walk ends in the Cartoixa de Vallparadís castle with the photograph “Silenci”.
Silence is a revelation. Life is made of moments of revealing silences, silences that also speak in their own shadow. Always near you there is a shadow of silence, always near you there is a trace. We are all somewhat uneasy inhabitants of the silences of life … and of its luminous shadows.
Mayte Vieta
Mayte Vieta
Mayte Vieta is a renowned visual artist who uses space and light as a means of expression through photography, sculpture and installation.
In her works a constant dialogue is discerned between culture and nature and a profound observation of the fragility of life and of our own bodies. Her images and installations invite us to introspection, to the silence of delving into our own selves. They spill us over the thresholds where darkness dilutes the truth and what is known, where all is open and possible.
In the course of her career she has held more than fifty individual exhibitions and her works have been shown in Catalonia and the rest of Spain.
She also has a recognised international career and her work has been seen in Lisbon, Zurich, Vevey (Switzerland), Paris and other places.
Her work is present in important national and international collections, among which we must mention the Lluís Bassat & Carmen collection, the Fernando Meana collection, the Jaime Sordo collection, the Alcobendas collection, the Banc Sabadell collection, the Fundació Antoni Vila Casas in Barcelona, the Endesa Collection, the Fundació Banesto, the visual smell of Ernesto Ventós collection, the Abdul Aziz collection in Dubai and the Pilar Citoler collection among others, and museums such as the CAB in Burgos and the ARTIUM of Vitoria-Gasteiz.
