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HALAL LOVE HARAM - Violeta Caldrés
20 May - 2 July
Violeta Caldre’s poetic and visual universe is formed by a crowd of creatures that refer us to our childhood's worlds. In her way of operating there is a determined will to show herself the way we like to think that we were at an age when we had no wickedness, resentment or dark shadows over our faces. Her calligraphy refers to pre-adolescent bedrooms, gentle colours, iconical density, apparent disorder and figures with smiling faces. This is when I should say that, nevertheless, this juvenile world contains a worrying side. Violeta's explosive world explodes in calm happiness and unselfish affection towards others. Her screens are made up of a crowd of white, red and black figures that expand over the walls with an invasive tendency to spread the good mood and the tenderness that each and every one of her figures exude, whether they come alone, with flowers or with colour lightened garlands. The contemplation of the works of Violeta Caldrés is an invitation to immerse in the delicate details of her drawings that watch us with sympathy, and also a big occasion, when we move away from the details and when we observe the picture as a whole, to take a deep breath and feel gratefulness for receiving such positive and generous vibrations. JAVIER GONZÁLEZ DE DURANA Interview with Violeta Caldrés by Javier González de Durana, Art Director at the TEA (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes), during the development of her project HALAL LOVE HARAM in the museum that is now shown at the Nuble gallery in Santander.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your project Halal LOVE Haram is a reflection on the enrichment of two different cultures being shared and respected just as they are. What kind of resources do you use in order to achieve that thought?My line of work is based on drawings that are cut out and assembled, and with the help of everyday materials from both cultures I try to create works that spring directly from their household and sociocultural imaginary.
For example, flower frames that portray and make divine the pagan, picked up from the religious image-making of the south of the European Mediterranean Basin. Moreover, these fabric flowers are very often used by the people of some Arab countries in an almost ornate way to decorate and to frame the private spaces of their homes. I also do the same with the iconography of the images I draw. It's a constant mix of symbols from one and an other culture that are brought together in a sensual manner, with more than one touch of irony and humour, in order to picture the facilities and the difficulties of both worlds as they are being shared. - --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* In Arabic, "halal" means "to allow" and "haram", "to forbid"; in between you've placed the English word "love". In what way do you think your art work can help to overcome sometimes profound and ancestral cultural contradictions?
It's true that contradiction exists between these two worlds, and it's also true that there are a lot of people struggling for a greater balance. In fact, one of my works represents a contemporary Libra, balancing the weight between the most powerful religions of the East and the West with love as the core of every relationship. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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Your iconographic world is very colourful and it inspires cheerfulness and optimism; the way it is spread on the wall in separated figures might suggest a will for expansion – a kind of going as far as one can- and each figure is a mixture of collage and direct action on the wall. Would you say that there is a narration that unifies those figures?
The story that I propose is like the story of life itself: we live in a “world full of small fires”, as Eduardo Galeano stated, and those fires are warming up each other…So, the way to expansion is to be able to get to people’s hearts through their different cultures as well, in order to make this world a better one.
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* What expectations for the future, and what kind of social repercussion do you think this project will have? What I am hoping for the future of this project –that is being showed for the first time at the Nuble gallery in Santander, and that I’ve executed the past months at the contemporary art museum TEA (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes) in the occasion of an artist in residence fellowship there, “ARTERIAS VISUALES”- is that it will continue and that it won’t stay just in the West. Hopefully it could also be shown in Arab countries, to confront new ideas and to look at the project from another point of view, reflecting a reality that is becoming more common each day in our countries, as the mix of cultures due to the North African immigration. One of the objectives I am reaching for is to create a reflection on the new "mixed" western societies as well as the social repercussion in the Arab world. To give a voice to the East from the West: In this case, “THE HAREM ON THE OTHER SIDE” might be the second part of the HALAL LOVE HARAM project. Do you think your work is being influenced by the political conflict that is taking place in North Africa these past weeks? If this is so, could you describe in what way?Indirectly, almost everything I experience appears in my work. And now as well, the social revolutions that are taking place in the Arab countries of North Africa, where the path to equality is beginning to be something more than an illusion for millions of people. Nothing comes from nothing, and I am connected day by day with the Arab world by being married to a Moroccan boy, and this positive change is being transferred to my work in the same way that my personal life is transferred to it.
After all, they are fighting for the same thing as me: wanting a better world, but from a different perspective. It’s as if everything that is happening is a chain reaction. They are demonstrating and I am too; they are fighting for peace in their country and under similar conditions and I am too; they are referring to social politics and I am referring to the politics of gender. To the private and everyday politics that can be experienced by people from one world and another who get together and start a social revolution that can be transferred to other social spheres of our lives, to change old and obsolete behaviours and come to live in equality. I always think positive, and if I communicate in this manner through art it's to connect with the most emotional and human side of all of us and of all of them, and if they are happy I'll be happy too, as a person and as an artist because I would have created one more bond, on the way towards a better world.
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