Tórtola Valencia, pienso en ti con mis manos

WEDNESDAYS OF SOUND AND BODY with Lara Brown

Tórtola Valencia, TóooORTOLAaaaValenCia: with these words echoing in her head, the artist embarks on a home-based research project that began almost two years ago. This work explores the life and artistic practice of the dancer Carmen Tórtola Valencia and her partner, Àngels Magret-Vila, and has unfolded into so many layers of thought that the artist has decided to frame it as a project that will accompany her in the years to come.

To date, she has read everything she can find, spent hours gazing at the same photographs, and moved her hands tracing impossible paths. The persistence of these practices has opened up a channel of intuition and imagination, from which stories and possible endings emerge, so plausible that, at times, the artist dares to say, “That is undoubtedly how it happened”.

This research is characterised by the rigour that springs from the need to name and to seek out historical landmarks; from imagining that lovers one hundred and twenty years ago also threw beautiful parties and showered one another with kisses; and from remembering that not all artistic practices that go down in history are the ones we would choose, and that others we might adore do not make it there because they are silenced.

This will be the first step in an intense, long-term, far-reaching research project. At this stage, it involves practising the exercise of looking deeply at an image in front of an audience until the information shifts, until we hear the image’s voices, and until the space between images begins to dance.