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| El portal/The Port |
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| Agua de rosas/Rose Water |
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| Cuerpo de batalla/Battle Body |
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| Carta a Yarisa Colón/Letter to Yarisa Colón |
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| Testamento/Will |
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| La extirpación de Dios/The Extraction of God |
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| Morfina/Morphine |
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| Postmenopausia/Post-menopause |
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| Cara de susto/Frightened Face |
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| Desde aquí/From Here |
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| Una carta de agradecimiento al Dr. Malamud/A Thank You Letter to Dr. Malamud |
The
images that compose the series Cuerpo de
batalla/Battle Body began as illustrations for the poems that make up the
artist’s book by the same title. The book, which I started creating in 2003
after going through a stem cell transplant after a recurrence of Hodgkin’s
Lymphoma, developed throughout the course of two years.
Although the poems came first, when
I decided to turn them into a book, I wanted the images that would go with the
poems to stand on their own so that they could tell my story visually and
powerfully. I tried several mediums before choosing to work digitally. I had
never been able to work successfully in this new medium, at least not
creatively. But as soon as I started creating layers, and controlling the
visual aspects of my own body, the images flowed into being without hesitation.
The story that these pieces tell is
the story of my body, of its struggle to survive on many levels. After such a
powerful experience—that to me is equivalent to dying and coming back to life—I
had to imagine and recreate both my inner and outer self. The body in these
pieces exists among the recurrent image of cancer cells seen through a
microscope and manipulated into colors and shadows, both complementing and
menacing the subject. As the images progress, the cells become less perceptible
and more colorful, a conquest that will never be final, but that can
nevertheless be claimed.
Most of the pieces focus on the
torso, the part of the human body where the majority of functions occur, and
where cancer developed in me. Only two images present people other than I: my
son, and my dear friend, the poet Yarisa Colón. My son is a part of my body,
still attached by the invisible forces of nature. Friendship also often felt
much like a body organ: without it I could not have survived. The darker images
propose a climax, death and darkness, dissolution and disappearance. They all
lead back cyclically to the first two (created last) in which the changed body
with its artificial “port” is surrounded by beauty and has evolved parallel
with a growing sense of pantheism as reflected in its fusion with plant life
and light.
Some images reflect the terror and
loss I felt, others the beauty and power I acquired through the battle for
survival. Together, they are the summary of an experience through which a
message of hope and empowerment emerges and flows with life.
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| Book |
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