THE FABRIC OF LIFE
by Jan Galligan and
Lillian Mulero
Santa Olaya, PR
“Are
you sure you have all the documents we need?” asks Lillian. “I
think so,” I tell her. We have carefully prepared for our third
annual trip to secure the registration for our car. We know that this can
be an all day ordeal, so we have brought books, magazines, puzzles,
games, water and snacks, along with all the paperwork related to the
car and our residence. We are nearing the front of the line and soon
will have our audience with the Department of Transportation clerk. I
sort through the papers again. “Uh, I think I left last year's
registration form in the car,” I confess to Lillian. This can be a
fatal omission. Last year, after waiting on line at the Bayamon DTOP
office for nearly five hours, when we presented our material to the
clerk, we were missing the proof for the physical address of our
house, and had to drive back to Santa Olaya to retrieve that
document, and then return to DTOP and rejoin the endless line snaking
through the office. This year, we are better prepared, and as well we
have come to the DTOP office in Caguas, where we had heard, the lines
are shorter. This is true. “I'll be right back,” I tell Lillian,
as I run for the car to retrieve the missing document before she
reaches the front of the line.
We
need to finish our quest within one hour, because
we have an appointment to meet the artist Natalia Martinez at AREA art space, for a tour of her exhibition. As well as having a
more efficient bureaucracy, we have discovered that Caguas
aggressively promotes and supports the arts. In addition to the Museo
de Arte, there is also Museo de Caguas, Museo del Tabaco, Casa del
Trovadore (singer), Casa del Compositor (writer), and the Museo de Artes Popular, all
supported by the city government. AREA is a
private enterprise started 10 years ago
by José
Hernández Castrodad
as “a place
for the exchange of arguments, critical thinking and the development
and presentation of art projects that seek to make connections
between artists in and out of Puerto Rico.” Natalia Martinez is
presenting her work along with two other exhibitions: Visual
Identity,
is a collaboration between visiting artist in residence Julie Sass of
Denmark and Ivelisse Jimenez, who lives and works in San Juan, and
features work made during Sass's residency at AREA; Lujan Perez, a
young spanish artist living in Florida, presents a series of
portraits tightly cropped to the head and shoulders, large format
drawings and woodcut prints, titled En
Busqueda de Lilliath. (Searching for Lilliath).
The
exhibition, Sobre
amor y otros cosas, (About love and other things) by Natalia Martinez should be considered an installation. Each work
illustrates a different perspective of her overall concept of
assembling a group of objects which at first seem unremarkable and
unrelated. Because of the way they are placed they
appear to be devotional objects, imbued with nostalgia. Because each
object has a history, they become talismans or souvenirs, and their
meaning acquires significance, giving them a substance you otherwise
would not expect.
The
eight works on display are objects she has found, collected or been
given over a number of years. The most simple, yet most poignant, is
a single page from a well worn, used paperback copy of Julio
Cortazar's book Un
Tal Lucas,
which Martinez purchased years ago from a street vendor in Caguas.
She was so enamored of Cortozar's story, a series of disjointed
observations that manage to present a complex portrait of Lucas, that
she read and re-read the book until it literally fell apart. She has
preserved this page, pressed between two sheets of
glass and mounted in a frame.
In
the middle of the gallery floor sits a rusted, crumpled sheet of
corrugated tin roofing which looks like it has been folded in half.
In fact, this panel was blown from the roof of her family's house in
Juncos during hurricane Hugo, which devastated the island in 1989,
when Martinez was in grade school. Her family's house was destroyed
and the roof panel ended up wrapped around a tree, where it remained
until last year when it finally fell to the ground.
Next
to this, also on the floor, sits a rusted tin can, the type
used to water plants when tending to the garden. This can belonged to
Henry and Else Klumb, and was given to Martinez by artist Jorge
Gonzalez while he was working on the gardens at Casa Klumb in Rio
Piedras. Martinez has filled the can with a large plant from her own
patio garden at her home in Santurce.
A
few years ago, another artist friend, Joe Leon, gave Martinez a
collection of materials he had inherited from the house of his
grandmother, a cuban immigrant, whose profession was a seamstress,
and who over many years amassed a large collection of fabrics,
patterns and materials used while making dresses for her clients.
These included the remnants of hundreds of dresses carefully rolled
and tied with ribbons. In addition there were paper and
plastic bags filled with fabrics cut to size according to specific
patterns for customers who for various reasons never
returned to complete their order. Each bag is labeled with the
customer's name and a description of the dress that was to have been
made.
Among
the fabrics from Joe's grandmother, Martinez found a pile of
deteriorating brightly colored material. She divided
the pile and nailed one half to the wall. Then she tacked the
other half onto the wall, and when it was secure, she removed the
nail, letting it fall to the ground. She titled this work,
Rainbow
falling.
Mounted
on the wall is a white wooden shelf that holds two small birds
nests, which Martinez collected from her garden. Each nest contains
threads and bits of fabric she had discarded while sitting on her
patio and working on sewing projects. She considers this work a
collaboration between herself and the birds that visited her patio
over many seasons.
Nearby
are two other pieces of fabric, plain off-white linen, draped side by
side from two hooks. Next to them is a small rectangular metal
souvenir copy of Rene Magritte's painting, The
Lovers,
which she purchased in a museum gift shop last year. In Magritte's
painting, the lovers kiss, but each has their head shrouded in fabric. “Our secret desire,” wrote Magritte, “is for a
change in the order of things.”
“Did
you get the paperwork?” asks Lillian, when I return, panting and
out of breath. She is now the next person in line. “Yes,” I tell
her. “Good,” she says, “but next year, I'll be the one who
gathers everything together before we leave on our visit to the
Department of Transportation. By the way,” she asks, “are there
any good restaurants here in Caguas?” “I'm not sure,” I tell
her, “let me check the Yelp listings for Caguas downtown. Do you
want Middle Eastern food? We haven't had tahini or tabbouleh in a
long time, and the restaurant Los Olivos is showing four stars.”
article in Spanish, published in En Rojo, Feb 4, 2015
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