Isabel Herguera exposes the creation process of ‘The Sultana’s Dream’ in Tabakalera

2023-09-14 12:44:40

The San Sebastian artist Isabel Herguera, who debuts as a director with the animated feature film ‘The Sultan’s Dream’ in the Official Section of Zinemaldia, opened an exhibition this Thursday in Tabakalera in which she shows the creation process of this cinematographic work, inspired by the feminist story of the same name written by the Bengali writer Rokeya Hussain. Beautifully colored watercolors, drawings made with henna, travel notebooks and animated cutouts on a multiplane are some of the contents that allow you to enter Herguera’s creative world. The exhibition can be visited from this Friday, September 15, until January 7 in Exhibition Hall 2 of Tabakalera.

Exhibition Hall 2 of the International Center for Contemporary Culture will house the exhibition, composed of different environments, as if it were the artist’s own studio. Not in vain, a large part of the film has been developed in the Tabakalera Artists’ Space, dedicated to supporting artistic creation, where Isabel Herguera and her team have worked on several residencies since 2016.

The exhibition tour of ‘The Sultana’s Dream’ includes numerous drawings made by Herguera in India between 2005 and 2017, when he began to design the film and capture the atmosphere and life in motion through the bustle and crowd of the large Indian cities. Along with these watercolor drawings, a sound installation will evoke the sounds of the places where the film’s scenes take place: Calcutta, New Delhi, or Ahmedabad. The project took shape in 2013, after some workshops that the artist gave in India.

The exhibition also shows the murals made with the technique of temporary tattoos or mehndi, an ancient art made in henna, with which a group of mehndi artists has designed ‘The country of women’, the feminist utopia that Begum described Rokeya Hossain in the story “Sultanas dream” written in 1905 and which was the driving force behind the feature film.

Furthermore, the exhibition reflects all the phases of the process of creating an animated film. From the compilation of ideas and references through the moodboard to the storyboard or storyboard and the animatic, in which a series of ordered and animated sequences are added that also have sound.

Immersive content

Isabel Herguera has provided her travel notebooks for the exhibition, which include multiple storyboards of the artist’s stays in Marsilliana (Italy), Cologne (Germany) and San Sebastián. «I carry my notebook with me everywhere; Sometimes just having him with me comforts me. As soon as I open those pages, I feel at home. Sometimes I draw when I am at peace, but most of the time I draw when I am seeking tranquility. The act of drawing is private, but once the notebook is finished, it no longer feels like my own. It comes off me. It becomes public,” says the artist.

Puppets and cutouts made of black cardboard and tracing paper complete an exhibition that also illustrates the procedure by which superimposed scenes are generated thanks to the multiplane technique. A video with outtakes from the film will also be shown. In addition, the public will be able to access immersive augmented reality content via mobile phone or tablet.

Activity program

The exhibition has an extensive program of activities in which the team that participated in the film “The Sultana’s Dream” will take part. The visual artist Ángel Peris will offer the workshop ‘Atlas. Art on paper and Chinese ink’, and the filmmakers Izibene Oñederra and Begoña Vicario will participate in a session of animated shorts. In addition, there will be guided visits, family art sessions, a workshop to build a multi-plane with the help of Laura Ibáñez or a Talking Cinema session with Herguera herself.