CLOTHES FOR BIRDS AND LEAVES

2024-09-14 19:44:08

CLOTHES FOR BIRDS AND LEAVES
Maria Bueno

I always say that I am a city girl and the grandson of the countryside. I had to go back to the land and as a worker, the environment and the villages taught me that the countryside always, always, offers me and gives me something. It is my mission then to give back and be grateful, even if I continue to study.

After my mother asked me to show off that costume that she conceived with passion, I thought we could do it in the village’s Community Hall, with the perfect excuse to share and celebrate together. We invited two artists who joined the idea and I talked with the women of the village: we will prepare the tastes and decorate the entrance to the House with straw hats and flowers. In addition, we will perform poetry and song writing, before visiting the exhibition, thanks to some people who live here.

That is why I want to thank Julia Moreno, Nati, the families of Eulalia, Mari and Loli, and Juli and Paco, Beni and Fran, Manu Ramírez, A. David Ruíz, Lindsay Ross and Janette Sandall, without forgetting the woman who have decorated the hats and provided food plans and artists.

Just for them, I wrote the following:

The village’s House of Tradition (I add “and of Memory”) is full of textiles and paintings to welcome Autumn and its uncertainty. We ask for a wet house, clothes for small birds and leaves for food. The actors were then called; wise men who with them clothes, threads, sewing and paintings receive and give signals.

I sat next to them; I was surprised and noticed. I want to relate, to learn from a culturally connected perspective, which connects me to them. César painted under his favorite tree every morning. He was caught by fire and left his mark on the canvas. As a mediator between other- and earth-forces, Caesar channels solar energy and stores some of it within himself. I verified this by his bright look and by seeing that the hand he painted, the right, was slightly larger than the left. Caesar, lightning force.

Pocho started from the knot as a construction base for his textile architecture. Cover, dense and clear. Sea and dry scrap outside; sometimes between fog and rain, others between company and silence that marks the change of seasons; celebration and shelter: the same chambaos or humble southern hole where I grew upë tyóbbo ó löbóppi or bubi breeding house with garibolos or dry grass; they may all be the work of Guimaraes. The final constructions were made from bushes, trees, bushes, palm and poplar leaves, grass, tomizas, esparto grass, stones and bronze clothes. Before life and change. Pocho, germinal power.

Ángeles was united with the small open window, listening to the radio and the sparrows. For all the sewing, cutting and addition of pieces of clothing, she tells herself: we are the children of a broken memory, the forgotten parents and the grandparents of the nebula. He looked at the street, his hair was moving, he saw ants running around, and he knew it was going to rain. Memory, forgetfulness and dark clouds. She closed her eyelids tightly and opened her eyes, hurrying to finish the planned grooming. Memory, forgetfulness and dark clouds. Close the last stitch well, remove the coffee from the heat and watch the first drops of rain fall. Vibrant hair. Angels, wind power.

The sun, the earth and the air show these works as traces of something powerful that is revealed, open in a channel that can surprise us and even shake us. As seen in some prophetic books, we can read in them something like something that is happening now.

Is it wet ground, clothing for the little birds and the leaves they eat? Have I done the right reading of the sages?

Ángeles Castellano (tribute to Faith Ringgold)

Ángeles Castellano

Cesar Moreno

Pocho Guimaraes

Clothes for small birds and leaves they eatHouse of Culture and Memory, Cañadas de Pareja, Antequera, Málaga. From September 29, 2024, starting at 11 am