THE MUTILATED FRAGILITY OF CHILDHOOD Diario de Yucatán

THE MUTILATED FRAGILITY OF CHILDHOOD
Diario de Yucatán - Artes y Letras – Julio 2008
Pain unveils itself in the figures of El Silencio del Agua.
El Silencio del Agua, Claudia Alvarez 2008
It would be very easy for one to shelter in the boundaries of an aseptic remark about the
aesthetics of sculpture, but if we remember Antonio Tapies indignation on the cold and
formal commentaries on Picasso’s Guernica (painting that, by the way, had its 71st
birthday this spring) about the tendency to only recognize plastic values and not the motive
that gave birth to the object, we will know we are right when we take a deep breath as we
go out from room number 2 at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Ateneo de Yucatán
(MACAY). This is the case of Claudia Alvarez’ El Silencio del Agua (The Silence of Water).
We could stop at the installation, at the sketched objects, at the armless figures… but no.
Later on a brief mention will be made; here the immediate reading is the pain, the
sadness, the suffering.
Without knowing –one will find out later– that the motivation of Claudia was working with
children in a Sacramento hospital, the immediate revelation of the little figures awakes in
the viewer the annoyance of sadness and vulnerability, of human fragility, greater when
that human being is a little one: his immature anatomy, still in progress, is even more
fragile, more ephemeral. The faces, looking up, hope for an absent answer, drowned in
time, relate to the uncertainty of the boy who will die without understanding why it had to
be that way, a question with no answer. And also, these children with no arms are not
allowed to hug anyone, not even to hold on to life. This is how this installation undresses
itself, raw in its absolute simplicity, inside room number 2 at MACAY. The Exhibition
reduces to seven children figures no taller than 70 centimeters. The only character that
actually has arms is lying down in the floor, rolled like a fetus, more like a corps than a
living being. And the annoyance begins precisely with the subject because it seems that
when it comes to childhood (since the Gerber baby), everything has to be happiness and
smiles.
Gombrich writes about it, making a reference to Oskar Kokoschka’s Kids Playing (1909): a
kid represented in a painting had to be nice and happy. Adults do not like to be aware of
childhood sorrows and they are offended by seeing this side of it. Kokoschka didn’t want to
be part of this conventionalism.
We realize he observed these kids with deep affection and compassion, capturing their
dreams and anxieties, the clumsiness of their movement and the imperfection of their
growing bodies. Almost a century later, Claudia works with childhood with a claim, owning
techniques like clay sculpture, watercolor, oil painting and installation. The clay sculptures
are a result of a staying in Gruber Jez Foundation.
A painful subject.
In the disturbing subject of child suffering, the probable territories are unfortunately
generous: children work and sexual exploitation, human organs traffic, abuse, drug
addictions, family violence, undernourishment, obesity, etc.
We know the subject of childhood and pain is historically overwhelming: a one-eyed or
headless doll, with messed up hair, surviving an event, is the object that talks behalf the
girl it used to belong who was devoured by chaos. Children, deform or defenseless,
victims in the best or worst case scenario, are the leading characters in new cinema
projects (the director Guillermo del Toro has used effectively this subject in movies like El
Espinazo del Diablo, El Laberinto del Fauno and more recently in El Orfanato). It is, let’s
say, the little fright, the concentrated pain, and the immense horror in the insufficient
continent.
The technique.
If figurative sculpture found a way of difficulty and slips after Rodin’s innovation of what it
seemed impossible, with his tormented poses and the sketchy finish, the problem for
postmodern and contemporary sculptors is to reinvent it after abstraction and deconstruction. Answers have come and gone, like the monochromatic work of George
Segal (1924 – 2000) in object propositions that are simply placed in contemporary
scenarios, coldly relating them to every day behavior. Also, Michelangelo Pistoletto (1933),
representative of arte povera and new realism, made contrasts between classic figures
and objects/installations like in La Venus de los trapos, piece that brought a smile to our
faces, even a slight one. But Claudia’s children don’t make us smile, like the Italian piece
does with skepticism and complicity. Her figures inspire compassion, astonishment and
action. Why does it have to be that way? What can I do? What would I do? Can I do
something? are questions ripped off from nails, sightless eyes, voiceless mouths and
armless bodies in Claudia’s artwork. Reality at sight we do not see, floating truth we want
to sink. More about the artist in www.claudiaalvarez.org.
María Teresa Mézquita Méndez
Translated by Alberto Castro Carvajal
Footprint photo: The artist Claudia Alvarez with two of her child sculptures from the show
El Silencio del Agua, showed at MACAY; simple but stunning. Photo: Sergio González
Castillo