El Poder de la Vulnerabilidad (The Power Of Vulnerability)

2018 – Present

In contrast to the barrier that a photographic camera may pose between the photographer and the subject, in the production of this work I use a lightweight portable scanner that allows me to capture the feel of a caress through the sight, by closely taking images of the subject’s skin, reliefs, and textures.

I verge upon the wounds of the psyche by observing scars on a given tree trunk and its roots. I rest a sheet of glass on a linden tree in this case and slide the scanner onto it, capturing the image blindly, by groping the surface. I process it digitally respecting the original colors of the file. The piece is laser printed on archival paper, with no other protection than a white airframe which gives it a light and weightless look.

I have intervened this work with my menstrual blood mixed with tobacco evoking the sacred origin of life. The ancestral cultures of my native America teach us that both trees and women are united and play a catalytic role in cosmic and terrestrial energies. This state of natural vulnerability is understood as a tool for spiritual connection through the perception of pain. For these cultures, tobacco is a medicinal plant that is used to open relationships, start paths, and pay respects and gratitude. Thus, grandfather tobacco assists and blesses my new relationship with vulnerability, no longer a weakness. Additionally, its medicinal properties seem to maintain the color of blood on photographic paper over time.

What is suffering and what is it for? Buddhism exposes that humanity’s unhappiness can be overcome by spiritual means. So suffering is a path whose only end is transformation. The Power of Vulnerability is the celebration of the heroic awakening to the consciousness of the feminine and a prayer for the balance of the feminine and the masculine, the passive and the active, the intangible and the material.