Opinion
In search of baraka
It has been quite some time since I have felt that sensation that anyone who has been interested in art, whether as a spectator or an artist, will have experienced when contemplating or making a work: I am referring to the aura –not in a completely Benjaminian sense–, but to the set of unrepeatable and original works that, in addition, manages to provoke an ineffable sensation in the depths of our being, a feeling that is both instinctive and spiritual.
If I've dedicated myself to the art world, it's been partly because of this feeling; this aura and magic that the works exude and contain has literally given me life. There have been works that, in some way, have touched something as intimate as it is unknown within me. And from there stems my intrinsic devotion to understanding art beyond the merely physical and visible, delving into this magical and spiritual realm, as well as the many forms and ways of expressing that which cannot be seen or touched.
As time passed and I grew older, I began to struggle to perceive this enchantment I had always loved about art, to the point of feeling nothing at all. I started to think that perhaps I had lost the ability to see or feel that magic, because, no matter how many works I saw and how many others I created, that ethereal quality no longer flowed through my hands and eyes. And, like an exile from paradise, I wandered aimlessly and hopelessly through this world, searching for that spark once more; sometimes it appeared for a few seconds, but it would fade like the last flame of a candle at the new moon.
The last time I experienced this transcendent feeling through art was at the CCCB exhibition “The Mask Never Lies,” specifically with the murals “The Mask of Mary Wigman Before Her Mirror” by Joaquín Santiago García and “The Mask of Emmy Hennings” by José Lázaro. Between these two murals, I felt spectral hands pass through my body and caress my heart and soul; I felt so many emotions within me at once that I dissolved between these two worlds, so different yet so alike. I didn't know how or why, but, as if by fate or chance, I had a feeling I was destined to see them.
Thanks to this exhibition, these paintings, and all the works I've seen and created with my own hands since then, something inside me changed; I began to create again, I began to see the invisible again, I began to feel again, and above all, I began to be again. Despite wandering aimlessly, I've rediscovered this arcane enchantment in art, and not only in the art displayed in museums and galleries, but also in the art that goes unnoticed, made out of devotion, love, craft, or simply for the sake of making.
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