Infinita vitalidad de la materia. Diálogos con madera | Guadalupe Valdes

I remember that first site visit on an island in the south of Chile. It was supposed to be short and intense, but the need to breathe the sea air and feel that cold and salty smell before returning to the capital pulled me onto the beach for a few minutes. There, standing a few meters away from the shore, I saw colors floating in the water: agonizing pieces of wood were coming going with the sea and its slow waves, and even from a distance, they captivated me. It was winter, but this wasn’t an excuse for not wading into the water and dragging them to the shore… This was the first of many encounters and trips that would later form part of this work that involved mixed reflections on art and poetry.

Suddenly, the entire color palette of those southern boats, sculpted by some seaside carpenter, was at my feet. Oranges, turquoises, vermilion, forest green, golden yellow, ultramarine blue… Enamels that I knew well, but these coats of paint, added to the wear and tear of water and time, were a new and sublime revelation. I saw the craftsman’s skilled hands carve, paint over and over, bend the wood using steam, manipulate the rudder, lower the anchor, prepare the mate, weather out the storm, and return home. I was looking at talking matter.

I decided to photograph them. I wanted to dialogue with them and take them with me wherever I went. Printed in a small format with aural proportions, I carried them around in a folder for almost a year, and after using this as a sketchbook, diary, and notebook for calculations, appointments, to-do lists and reflections, they became witnesses to my contingency and unwittingly gave way to my first artist’s book, ‘Infinita vitalidad de la materia / diálogos con madera’.

Today, when I look over each finding and run my fingers over these pages, it seems SO HUMAN to me, and it’s that they spontaneously humanize me: I return to writing with a pencil on paper, I touch every furrow of time once again. I return to the passage from the book of Ecclesiastes that says, “All come from dust, and to dust all return.” I once again recognize the hand that was, the seed that was, the poetry that exists, and how that which we had given up looking for is capable of turning on a new light.

Guadalupe Valdés