Some reflections on symbolism in the masks by Marta Díez Ojeda Ledesma Posse

By Javiera Casanello
“... and it may be awkward having to justify creation from the outside, since the creative act has to do with an urge rather than with anything else. I feel much the same way while I am designing, or when I have to review students’ work at the end of their Faculty courses.” Segue Sontag said, Against interpretation (1964): the excess interpretations have finally poisoned, tamed and reduced the complexity of great art works. Interpreting made sense at the beginnings of modern thought, when mystic thought was overtaken, but by now it should be reduced. Sontag claims that hermeneutics, which discloses meanings in art works, should be replaced by an ‘erotics’ of art encouraging more seeing, hearing, and feeling, thus revealing the sensuous surface of art without muddying it. According to architect Josep Quetglas, only the work of art is important, and reviews do not make sense, “any judgement being always an unfair action.” But what I meant to comment on by making a kind of “theoretical review”, is that your using masks as an expression of art is a vanguard action, because when one surveys “the Birth of Art” from the time of caverns, one finds that, at the beginning, graphic representations on the walls were meant to appeal to the spirits, to magic, for the purpose of hunting. They were certainly not made for the enjoyment of others – they were far too deep inside the cavern for that – but had a function of their own. Much the same thing happens with masks, which have been deprived of the function they used to have, whether magic, medical, witchcraft, or concealment during Carnival, and so on: they had a function justifying them. Whereas your masks, deprived of a function, are revolutionary - they are a kind of modern art expression, dadaism of 2006. This, I believe, is by far what is most important about your work: the fact that you cannot give it a logical explanation, that it does not wish to represent other than itself , This is precisely where the strength of modern art works lies. And your own strength as well.