There is a line. A line drawn a long time ago.
A line that traces my genetic, emotional, ancestral, historical, cultural, artistic memory.
I talk to my past, the past of the place where I grew up, the places where I chose to live...
I talk to loved ones who are gone, who are somehow still there.
I talk to people present in flesh and blood in my life.
I talk to people who inspire me, teach me, guide me.
Including those I didn't know, but that somehow are in me.
Clarice Lispector, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Paula Rego, Louise Bourgeois, Carolee Schneemann, Käthe Kollwitz, Minako Seki, Yoshiko Shimada, Ana Maria Maiolino, Regina Vater, Lenora de Barros...
Still a tangle of threads. The thread is called LOVE.
Soft. Warm.
I sit down and clear it. I prepare the ball.
I start the interweaving. Still from a place I don't know exactly what it is. But I know where it comes from.
Christina Elias, Liquids series (finger knitting, performance-objects, 2021), photo: César Meneghetti
In Portuguese "nós" (We) is the same word as the plural of knots . To weave the present is to perform a series of knots.
Several stories and experiences that intertwine and form a web. Lives are not individual.
The works are not individual.
As time passes, as my hands move, a braid appears. A braid that looks like living tissue, placenta, flesh, fire and light. This braid forms another tangle – the one I shape. And maybe from there - from this series of knots, which don't come only from me - that my individuality as a woman in this life, in this body, is born. The way I give form to what was given to me.
Love, spirit, life, flow, continuity, archetype... Now I understand Louise's spider mother, Lispector's chicken, Maiolino's interludes, Regina Vater's knots, Paula Rego's love... and I rewrite.
Christina Elias, Liquids 3, object-performance, knitting fingers on canvas fence (for chickens)
Paula Rego, Love (Amor), pastel crayon on paper, 1995
Louise Bourgeois, nº 8 of 14 of the installation set À l’Infini, 2008, Soft etching, with gouache, watercolor, watercolor, pencil and colored pencil additions, MOMA New York.
Ana Maria Maiolino, Interludes (Entrevidas, performance, 1981)
Regina Vater, Nós (interactive installation, 1973)
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