Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz publishes ‘A kiss in Tokyo’, an island in a sea of ​​lobotomic stimulation

2023-10-01 18:53:26

Art curator, former UNESCO diplomat, columnist and writer. Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz adds to his career of twelve books a first novel, ‘A kiss in Tokyo’ (La huerta grande), written from the reflective and contemplative rhythm characteristic of oriental culture, and which is now in its second edition. Between quotes from authors from different eras and artistic branches, reflections of the protagonist—a successful architect—and a love story, the work is an island in the sea of ​​the culture of immediacy and lobotomic stimulation. The author attacks this during the interview with the force of the wave that guards the pages of the book, courtesy, of course, of the Japanese painter Katsushika Hokusai.

It is told from the perspective of the protagonist, named Kengo Oh, whose restless imagination and admirable resilience manage to overcome a profound personal and professional crisis, at a time when “he realizes that he has lost not only the vital impulse, but also the love of what was the essence and reason.” of his life: architecture. Nothing in the book seems coincidental, everything comes full circle. “I really like the orientals who conceive human life as if it were a poem, with its rhythm, its cadence, its decay, as a very complex form of beauty,” says the writer, who understands her work as “a praise to “beauty, mystery, what surprises us, the sublime, perhaps like something that is being lost.”

Carrillo does not hide that Ōe is a transcript of the successful Japanese architect Tadao Andōadmired and personal friend: «Andō uses light as if it were a material at will, with an overwhelming force as simple as nature. It turns out that before becoming an architect, he was a boxer with little future, who one day felt the kiss of destiny in front of a construction of Frank Lloyd Wright, in the heart of Tokyo. «He does not have the means nor the necessary grade to access a career in architecture, so he takes a trip around the world in which he visits the great buildings in the history of humanity, from the Pantheon in Rome to the buildings of Le Corbusier» says Carrillo, in whose novel the protagonist makes a similar journey. These first steps formed an architect who ended up winning the Pritzker Prize in 1995, something like the Nobel Prize in architecture.

There are pictorial works distributed among the pages of the novel that serve as a spiritual map of a protagonist in search of beauty as a vital tendency. The book collects poems, paintings, movie quotes, philosophies, from Borges to Confucius, from “Frank Sinatra to Muhammad Ali,” adds the author. “Borges said that he boasted about what he had read, not what he had written,” and Carrillo takes note. Reflections guide the viewer through multiple short chapters; a rhythmic and polished writing with an air of haiku.

Culture of immediacy

«We have the obligation to be optimistic, because it is a driving force. “Within every human being there is a wonderful light,” estimates the creator. However, she admits that there are reasons in today’s society that test her best humor: “This immediacy by which we live so quickly… Maybe we are forgetting to live, as Julio Iglesias said.” References aside, the author focuses on the danger of forgetting: «It is not that we forget quickly, it is that oblivion no longer exists because there is no memory. “Lasting values ​​are obsolete.”

Is it all social media’s fault? The answer is not so simple, but Carrillo argues that platforms like Instagram, “where everything is repeated, everything is copied, everything is consumed,” worry him deeply. «The need to tell everything in false moments It makes us forget what is truly beautiful,” he is saddened and trusts that this situation “will simply explode naturally.” Maybe that’s what he means by optimism.

This increasingly abundant trend of ‘selfies’ in museums, of turning works of art into collectibles in a virtual library, also worries this international art curator. “If you go to a museum and the only thing that interests you is to photograph yourself for a moment and leave, you are not looking, nor are you enriching yourself, nor have you learned anything,” she says and suggests a certain “navelism” as the cause of the prevailing artificiality. . «We are losing curiosity. You have to look at the world as if you were a child and marvel. “The great artists are those who have not lost that capacity,” says Carrillo.

Fernando Botero: great teacher

The recent loss of the Colombian painter Fernando Botero , has had an impact on the writer, who maintained a personal relationship with him and wrote a book about his work. As a student of the figure, she wishes to highlight “an artist whose reason for existence was art and solving the problems of art.” “Botero is the epitome of the man who fights for what he believes, who follows his instinct in art without knowing why and who understands it little by little,” says the curator. «He began to paint with volume without knowing why he did it. His legacy shows us how the search for his style went, as the great masters of every era do,” he highlights, and leaves a message “for all those who said that Botero’s art was an easy art or that it was a commercial art: Please open your eyes and understand the significance of his work.