TABLEAU VIVANT

We have before us Clara Carvajal, author of the work with which she opens today at the Espacio Valverde Gallery in Madrid. **Tableau Vivánt**; a large wood carving based on the famous 1819 painting by Théodore Géricault, *The Raft of the Medusa*. We will be able to benefit from chatting with her after having seen this great project that includes the wood carving of more than 6×4 m, and a whole collection of her prints on paper.

Q: A historicist work?

A: Every work is historicist; give ten minutes to what you are writing down about this interview and you will have a note about it; give it three months and it will be a journalistic note and let ten years go by and it will become a newspaper article.

Q: I mean that it is intentionally historicist.

A: It is reflexive and, therefore, it plays with the temporal component. But what interests me is to highlight three things:

First there is the fact that I take a reference work, a well-known painting, which in turn deals with a real event, which thanks to Géricault’s work has not been forgotten, and I build from there. But, let’s not forget, the original work is already done and finished; I am not interested in simply reproducing it: I am not a copyist. What attracts me is to point out the distance that remains between the original historical event -a brutal human tragedy-, the painting and us; the tragedy that occurred, the way it was perceived in its time and the way we see it today. In exploring these different readings I see a tendency to lose the human referent, something that is common to many works of art today. I remember a moment when I became aware of this when, years ago, I saw in Beirut an impressive tapestry about the massacre in the Shatila refugee camp, based on the original work by Dia al Azzawi that is kept at the Tate in London. Now, Lebanon is sadly in fashion, but when I was working there on another project, four years ago, it was not like that. So, let’s say that those kinds of tragedies had been blurred, relegated to what we called history. When I saw the work, I went from contemplating a piece of art, trying to appreciate its aesthetic merit, to visualizing the drama it narrated. I find it motivating to think that artists can do something to call the viewer’s attention to those human elements of our coexistence, so often frustrated. To leave room when contemplating the works for something more than just aesthetic production, which is also very important but I don’t think it should be exclusive.

Q: Vindicative art is not in fashion.

A: It’s on its way back. With tortuous approaches, as if we didn’t want to let it back in. But by human component I am not only referring to what could be called politics. There is something else; it is the presence of man and his elements, which include sensibility and thought.

Q: And the rest of the points you mentioned?

A: The second is the presence of the artist. If we want to take seriously the difference between Artificial Intelligence and Art, we have to promote the incorporation of the artist in the work. We have to make the artist present not only intellectually but also in the material execution. I carve wood and print paper. Both things can be done industrially, mechanically, but the difference in the final product, the quality that is achieved is very different from that obtained by hand. I carve by hand in my studio, I also print by hand on a press that I have there, and after having done many tests I prefer to continue this way.

Q: But it’s only a matter of time until machines improve and manage to imitate the quality of human production.

A: As long as it’s just a matter of imitating the artist, I have no problem. Although, at the moment, we are far away. And if it has to come, let’s enjoy it while we can.

Q: And the rest?

A: To emphasize these elements of human participation in the work, I have made an unusual intervention in wood carving, eliminating several faces of the original characters on the raft. In doing so, I intend to motivate the viewer to ask themselves; where are the faces of these people? I don’t need any more. That and that when I use extras to take the place of the painted faces, the spectators themselves are aware that the figures they see are, first and foremost, beings of flesh and blood.

Q: What about the printed papers?

A: I see that you notice! Yes, in the papers there are no gaps like in the wood, nor do real people appear. What there is is a red circle, a call for attention, like a traffic light, which also allows me to play with the aesthetics of the whole.

**Q:** A performance?

A: What more could I want! I’m not a scenic artist; we don’t invite the audience to peek through the gaps to motivate their participation. No; there is a work that really struck me by a late Iranian artist, Farideh Lashai; I am now aware of how much it struck a chord with me when I first saw it at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran. It was then shown at the Prado Museum in 2017. The artist uses prints from Goya’s *The Disasters of War* to display them, side by side, on a large wall in black and walk through them with a spotlight. The faces of the executed had been erased from the copies of the engravings and when the spotlight shone on them, they reappeared. It was something spectral, very suggestive and that corresponded very well both with the title of the work and with the myopia that affects us with respect to that human element that I miss in many works of art. The work is titled: *When I count, you are the only one, ….. But when I look there is only a shadow*. I think that this loss of human referents is something very deeply rooted in modern Western art. And it also seems to me that the absence of the human being that follows is one of the great losses of Art. So I like to bring together in this project a humanist theme, a handmade production and some flesh and blood participants. It is a way of recovering these humanist elements.

Q: I remember the work; it was very impressive. And this form of presentation? It’s almost like an ecclesiastical vault.

A: No; for me it is more of an archaic, cave-like element. I like to think of it in terms of the Altamira Caves. Something that brings us very close to some origin, and where there is no doubt about the intervention of the hand of man. I like that it can be contemplated by immersing oneself in the space it occupies.

Q: Interesting.

A: Do you mind if I tell you a curious anecdote about the faces and the anonymity of the faces? Just to take some of the drama out of it, since the whole production of this project has been a source of excitement and satisfaction for me and my team, and nothing depressing or dark.

I nod, and it goes on:

A: This street in the gallery is called Valverde, but it was originally called de las Victorias. It seems that a young gentleman prowled after a granddaughter Don Juan de la Victoria Bracamonte, who lived nearby. One night when he ventured too far around the house of the young granddaughters, some masked characters, covering their faces, came upon him and shot him down. At last, with one foot on him, they proclaimed; Shame on you, you have been defeated by the Victories! And the fact is that the characters who had cut him off were the granddaughters of Don Juan de la Victoria.

Q: Lovely story! It seems like this place is meant to play on people’s anonymity.

A: Yes, fate; in a way it’s a timely coincidence.

Q: And the fact that wood carving and paper prints are shown together?

A: I’ve been promoting what I call the biology of the image for years. I think we are very stingy with images because we live in their abundance. Cinema has taught us to condense many images in the same support; that’s what cinema originally consisted of; on the other hand, I explore what happens when we see the same image stopped, on different supports. I use the same images and present them in different media, materials and digital. But the same image. In extremis, we are used to finding an image, such as that of a chair, on many different supports and we recognize it as such, as the same image. I would love to make a catalog like those department stores, where we could see the image of a chair in all the formats they use; paper, video, digital screen, cardboard, billboard, photography, fabric… You name it!

That’s why, in my latest projects, I have presented the images I work with, side by side, on wood, on paper, in photographic format and even in literary form; with texts. I would like to do something with fabric, too.

Q: And in the end, what do you value most about the work?

A: The hours I spend with it. These large-format works require a lot of work. In this one there is more than a year of exclusive and intense work; a standard workday dedicated entirely to this project for more than twelve months. Dedicated, I mean, to carving and stamping with my hands. This is something that gives you a very significant proximity to the work. It is not the result of a fortunate one-time occurrence that does not require anything else to do. There is accumulated work based on hours, in the old Marxist sense of the term, which no longer seems to apply in art as a measure of value.

Q: One last question; there is a loose piece, a free verse. I think you told me it’s a fishbowl?

The interviewee finally laughs:

A: A loose verse, yes: I like the expression. Look, I recognize that this is something that some people don’t get; it catches them off guard. But the whole work is about getting off guard! It is a fishbowl full of aquatic life. A sort of canticle to life; positive and hopeful. I really enjoyed doing it because it is also carved and printed in several overlapping colors. To do that in woodcut there are several ways; I have chosen the lost plate. It is a process in which there is no turning back and each step is irreversible. It is a matter of stamping each of the desired colors as you carve the necessary hole following your drawing on the wood plate. In the end, the wood simply disappears and becomes unusable; the stamping cannot be reproduced again.

Q: Use and throw away?

A: We don’t throw anything away here; there’s the carved plate; but yes.

Q: And what is its meaning?

A: Conceptual? This project is an immersion in time to connect with events of more than a century ago. To do that you have to open a tunnel that allows you to move from one context to the other, from the present to the original. To go through symbols and meanings. The fish tank is baroque, more so than the original painting, which has a more sober realistic romanticism. But that’s why they go one on top of the other. Let’s say that the fishbowl is a digression in that tunnel of time, but towards the bottom of the sea. The holes, the faces, the red circles, some elements that I have carved inside the scene, sea crabs, and the fish tank, are the elements that bring dynamism and give it a life of its own, claiming the visual attention in the directions I am looking for.

Q: It only remains for me to make reference to how the separately printed sheets are diluted; they look like oriental drawings that you have arrived at by a path of decomposition of this monumental piece.

A: That’s the best compliment you could give me. Thank you very much.

Q: To you, to you; and good luck with the exhibition.