Teresa matas

"Para ver el cielo"2009 Museo Industrial SUMMERLEE (Escocia) IN FLUX: Visiting Artists,LONDON /MAYO del 2008/ Teresa Matas invites spectator participation in her installation “Dejar Huella,” but not the sort of spectator participation that “completes” the work, that provides fulfilment of the artist’s creative process in the spectator’s experiential and perceptual reception of it, that endows the work with necessary collaborative closure. No, in “Dejar Huella”, as in religious ritual, participation in “Dejar Huella” is oriented toward the spectator her or himself, toward inducing a transformative introspection, a mirror-like catharsis, a change. Matas provides the empty vessels on the floor; we provide the full vessels of ourselves. Hence the deceptively simple means of “Dejar Huella,” means that are as suggestive as they are solid, as poetic as they are real: an accumulation of empty round clay pots, almost but not quite identical, placed in a long row that seems to suggest a widening path leading from this to some other place, an interstitial bridge from art to life. These pots are accompanied by a phrase in Catalan that is quite difficult to translate but that might be rendered as “Cast away fear from your life/Overflowing together, we purge terror.” Evidently this purgative effect of art-work on art-spectator lies within the murky religious origins of all art; arguably it is still there, somewhere beneath the surface, awaiting activation regardless of whether activation occurs, regardless of whether we are aware of it. But in “Dejar Huella” this catharsis is not produced vicariously, it does not take place at a distance, it is not even metaphorically sacrificial: in other words, it is not theatre. The catharsis at play here lies closer to that of prayer and perhaps confession, ‘talking cure’ processes that involve verbal exteriorization as a means toward introspection, introspection as a means toward verbal exteriorization, and both as a means toward spiritual cleansing liberation. Words without thoughts never to heaven go; thoughts without words suffer a similar sort of dangerous stagnation, a condition ripe for festering spiritual rot and putrefaction. And from there it is but a short step to the fear and terror to which Matas so jarringly dares brings to fore in her instructional ‘writing on the wall.’ As in all instructions, action is being called for, action that springs from but goes beyond the language immediately at hand. This dualism between words and action is not unrelated to the dualism between faith and works of Catholic doctrine, where faith without works is dead and works make faith perfect. Acts and words share a similar bond. George Stolz ISABEL: Is performance an essential part of your freedom of expression? In Vessar-se (2000), Vanus (2001) and Carrer de la Pau (2001), your body comes into contact with objects that require remarkable physical efforts. Is that connected in any way to flagellation or self-punishment? TERESA: I confess to be a body in constant action! Isabel, I am an eternal performer with or without an audience and I only begin to understand the reasons for my performances from a distance, once the emotion of the moment has waned. I may give off an erroneous image of mortification when I depict extreme female actions, but that is merely an attempt to reflect efforts, my efforts and those of many other women, in the natural eagerness to fulfil the role of sharing lives while managing to satisfy their inner lives as best they can. As for not having the vocation of martyr, I should clarify: I always want the best for myself, because I am sure that by perfuming my body with the most beautiful flowers in the garden, I will be sharing something good with my fellow humans. Isabel Cadevall // Teresa Matas