Project · 2015 · Cádiz
Seres Invisibles
Creation, management and curation
La ropa tendida
What we hear of war always reaches us in the form of figures. Over and over: 3,460 dead, 4,223 missing. The press reports the ever-rising numbers as if it were awarding lottery prizes. The individual is forgotten.
But behind every number is a person who once had a life, a family, people they loved and who loved them, dreams they will never fulfil. In each figure is hidden an invisible being, trapped inside a number. In this exhibition I want to give life to the essence of each of these anonymous people.
The element chosen for the series is the evocative power of washing hung out to dry. Who hasn’t felt the presence of their loved ones impregnating every fibre of the fabric, in its scent?
«Seres Invisibles» began its life in Seville, in August 2014, after my flights to Israel — where my family lives — were cancelled because of the terrible war that broke out at that moment.
Alongside these works the series «Guerra» is presented for the first time, created in 2006 in my studio in Barcelona. That year I was commissioned to create some large-format works for the set design of a piece by Julia Bel, a visual poem about the Spanish Civil War. And while I was working on the project, the war with Lebanon broke out in my country of origin: suddenly the newspapers were full again of the same landscapes of horror and destruction as then. I painted what I felt. This is how these paintings came to be.
All wars are, in the end, their own worlds. Small islands of disconnection, disaster and forgetting within this immense world. Fertile oases amid figures of death and abandonment. Spaces inhabited by invisible beings who pulse within us, where our hearts are intertwined.
The series · 2014
Seres Invisibles
White washing hung out to dry, painted again and again. Each being carries a number, like the figures of war; here each number becomes someone again.
What was hung
The works in the room
The works hung at the Baluarte, and the series «Guerra», which had spent nine years in storage and was seen here for the first time.
El Baluarte de la Candelaria
The room, sewn with red thread
The red thread crosses the room from side to side, running from one work to the next. It is what cannot be seen between one person and another, placed where it can be seen.
At the far end
El túnel
A light at the end, and a barbed-wire fence in front of it.
The video piece
Visible / Invisible
Four minutes. There is the body, which can be seen; and there is the dress, the red fabric, which leaves the trace of the person who is not there. It was filmed at the opening of «Mirar más allá de lo que vemos», at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide.
Cádiz
The opening event
That night gave rise to the second video, «A los seres», filmed at the Baluarte itself.
What people wrote
The collective work
A blank wall and a brush. Whoever came in wrote whatever they wished; by the end of the exhibition the wall was another work, and it belonged to no one.
Credits
- Creation, management and curation
- Rinat Izhak
- Paintings
- Rinat Izhak
- Exhibition
- Baluarte de la Candelaria, Cádiz
- Video piece «Visible / Invisible» · 4 min
- Creator: Rinat Izhak Video art: Mar Gabarre Marín Dance, voice and text: Belle Alzamora Soundtrack: Musgö Camera: Carlos Godot and Virginia Martín Dress design: La Casa Sentida — María Varona
- Video art «A los seres» · 5.30 min
- Video art: Rinat Izhak Camera: Adam Newby, Estudio 3713 Filmed at the Baluarte de la Candelaria, Cádiz Collaborators at the event: Beatriz Gómez Portillo, Paula Pérez de Vargas Segovia, Tamara Gata Jiménez
- Artist’s assistants
- Beatriz Gómez Portillo Paula Pérez de Vargas Segovia Tamara Gata Jiménez Catalina Bejarano Pablo Leira Doce Enrique Rodríguez Martín Gastón Puente Mauro Adán
- With the support of
- FIT de Cádiz — Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro Ayuntamiento de Cádiz · Fundación Municipal de Cultura Casa de Iberoamérica Encuentro de Mujeres de Iberoamérica en las Artes Escénicas Universidad Pablo de Olavide · Proyecto Atalaya