Cristina Huarte (Zaragoza, 1988) presents his work for the first time in Mexico, it is a work built from Spain and consolidated in Aztec lands. According to the artist, “Aleteo Negro”, she weaves a web of feminine spirituality entwined by the diversity of experiences, traditions and ethnic worldviews.
“Aleteo Negro” consists of a main piece in the shape of a butterfly, eight figures made of iron, a video performance and a series of drawings, which reveal in their psychic function the awakening of the chrysalis.
Regarding his work now exhibited at the Cultural Center Spain, The Economist spoke with the creator, who reveals that working with the symbology of the butterfly arose from the inspiration gained in San Cristóbal de las Casas. “There I began to work with the landscape and collect materials. These were collected in a very easy way, even from the game and finding magic in them. They are objects of personal power and I am drawn to them for no conscious reason, but they have also been linked to experiences and connected to women who have been healers and weavers.”
For Cristina, butterflies symbolize beyond this “beautiful and charismatic” species, she wanted to speak from another part that also makes up the species, for example, moths, the Rothschildia Orizaba, this butterfly with nocturnal habits that connects us with our part. more vulnerable and afraid.
“From the moment I discover a moth under my bed, they started chasing me. From Chiapas to Oaxaca, in the studio where I paint, I found a moth on top of the closet, it was huge, but it was enlightening, it is recognizing that part that scares us, from that vulnerability, from that moment in which we are very authentic, when we we also find ourselves in the shadows to recognize ourselves and reach the light”.
Another important element that complemented this analytical work for Cristina’s exhibition is the poem by Octavio Paz, Mariposa de Obsidiana. Brian Nissen describes it as a lament for the goddess Itzpapálotl, the goddess of war and at the same time the goddess of childbirth; she is represented as a butterfly with jaguar claws: a curious incarnation of life and violence. In the poem she sings of her defeat, overshadowed by the arrival of a new religion. The poem also refers to the Rothschildia, the so-called ‘four-mirror butterfly’, due to the transparent areas of its wings, which, being triangular, evoke arrowheads.
With everything and the European background that precedes her, especially in Berlin, Cristina has connected with the Latin American landscapes, first in Peru, then in Mexico, “I feel a great community spirit, there has been a great conversion of energy, it is different when I’m here.”
The pieces
Cristina describes her work: “it is about wings of light, they carry obsidian, because it is the transforming stone and amber that acts as fossilized memory, it is found in the main sites of Chiapas.”
He explains that the entire image of the butterfly with four mirrors is accompanied and acts through a psychoanalytic character to see things of life or death. “This dark butterfly came down to earth with an invisible cloak, it is that force of the butterfly woman that can repair herself with the beating of her wings.”
The result is wings of light to walk in the dark, hence the ‘black flutter’. “For me it is also about all this fluttering that we are experiencing as humanity, it is a portal that is opening to overcome the collective and internal crises. That is why this character also talks about historical violence, that past that we carry with us, but that through this element connects us with the present and the future”.
The accompanying pieces are part of a video performance that took place around the work between Oaxaca and San Cristóbal. “Several groups of women I worked with participated in it, they wrote a phrase that could serve as motivation and a message to encourage humanity. All the small sculptures that accompany the main piece are like shadows drawn from a devastated past. Each sculpture is a shadow of the women that appear in the video.”
Cristina hopes that all the languages she uses, performance, sculpture, painting and drawing, are a vehicle that brings hope. “That all these feminine samples serve as medicine to heal a little all the maternal wound that we have carried since all time, that it works like an amulet.”
The artist stays in Mexico indefinitely, and is even developing another project that will take place in the community center of Teotitlán del Valle, called Inflorescence.
“I have done my entire career in Europe, in Spain, but now I have a lot of inspiration, I feel that my energy fits very well here, it is very balanced, that is why I am working on things from my culture, syncretizing with pre-Hispanic culture, gathering materials of the environment, of the land, resources of the territory, this is crucial for me at this time”.
More about the artist
Cristina Huarte (Zaragoza, 1988) graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Salamanca in 2011. Recently, she has received the “Aragonese Artist/for outstanding artist under 35 years of age” award for her artistic projection. In 2019 he received the Arts & Letters Award, awarded by the Heraldo de Aragón, currently, he is in different states of Mexico in various artistic residences: Galería Muy (San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas), Estudio Abierto (Oaxaca), Ceiba Gráfica (Veracruz) with the support of the PICE (Spanish Cultural Action) scholarship.
His latest exhibitions and most important projects have been: “Kawsay”, a project that has been commissioned and exhibited at the Fundación Caja Rural de Aragón after his artistic residency in the Sacred Valley of the Incas (2019-2021). Kai Residence. Cusco, Peru.
Black Flutter
- From March 7 to April 23
- Place: Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico; Republic of Guatemala street 18, Center.
- Open from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
