Los Reptiles | Francisca Aninat

Los Reptiles is an artists’ book from the series Libros de Ausencia (Books of Absence) by the Chilean artist Francisca Aninat.

Libros de Ausencia (“Books of Absence”), refers both
to past encounters that are no longer possible, and to those who created the images and whom we will probably never meet. The spectator, on approaching the books, realizes that they have a particular weight and size, and that there is something inherently tactile in the experience of turning their pages. The format of each of the pages depends on the thickness of the images on that page. There are variations in the thickness of a line or a figure, landscape sketches that transform into an animal or a series of streaks. These images and phrases were compiled from chance encounters with random individuals, in conversations in the hospital corridors, the nearby bus stop or on the way from one place to the other. Hence the name. The books –Luminous Serpents, The Canal, A Hot Oven or White Birch Trees– are of unfinished sketches; there’s no firm artist’s hand, no completed work. Instead there is an openness toward an intimacy in which both the participant and the spectator can find their own readings of the work.