Cristina Mejías and small knowledge

Cordova,

In the fall of 2023, the artist Jerez Cristina Mejías intervened one of the rooms of the Patio Herreriano Museum of Valladolid presenting her project Wandering apprentices: using curved wood, treated with boldness -this material refers to the work of his family, his brother is Luthier -shaped an animated landscape composed of wavy and apparently living forms, arranged to variable heights with respect to the spectator. The public should precisely activate the whole, not only for contemplation.

The two basic referents of that proposal were placed in nature, and curiously far from the earth: it was the communication of whales in the seabed and the flight, so synchronized, of the starlings. As for the first, a stay in the Azores led Mejías to explore the choral character of that peculiar language of the cetaceans, and in their harmony find some parallels with the necessary so that those birds generate hypnotic spots in their displacements. Both the artist served to deepen the forms of expressiveness, and knowledge transmission, which escape the models regulated by having more to do with the contagion, repetition or social assimilation and that over time they become brittle, precisely because of their lack of linearity.

Scripture has dominated human expression since its invention, marking the beginning of history; Faced with her reign, this Andalusian author sought to make orange visible and relevant, a communication that goes beyond the codes of language and that implies the movement of the bodies often a circularity of sounds and shapes. Those woods so ductile among which visitors to the Valladolid center walked to a tactility that questions the primacy of the gaze; They came to sound subtly, even without the need to be rubbed, without the participation of third parties, for their very vibration. The set completed a video in which the wind acted as a trigger for that choreography of non -static elements.

Wandering apprentices It can be contemplated, until the end of October, in the first individual exhibition of Mejías in an Andalusian institution: the C3A de Córdoba hosts, under the police station of Claudia Rodríguez-Ponga, “Knowledge of the ear”, a assembly in which this work does tandem with another specifically produced for this occasion and entitled Silent singers.

In the latter, the artist has used lights, reflexes and transparencies that refer to the lattices that are part of the museum’s architecture; The pieces that make up the installation have been prepared with fabric, wood, metal or paper and, again, the spectator will play a role in its activation: in its path, one of the works will be illuminated, modifying its perception of space around by shadows and reflexes and through the variation of its relationships with the rest of the artifacts. As in the case of Wandering apprenticesthis project is amplified by a video that is deployed on two screens, as an open book: objects that move in circular motion are found in it and generate different sounds when they collide with each other.

Cristina Mejías. Know of ear. C3A Andalucía. Photography: Guillermo Garrido

Even a third work links the rooms where the previous facilities are shown: it is called Boulder (2022) and consists of a ceramic curtain composed of accounts that, again when touching each other, give rise to a sound quite close to the water running in a stream. As we see, each device of their work interrelates with the rest, varies its links with others with and without our intervention and articulates a particular sound: all works can be understood as prologues or epitches of others; They have been meticulously intertwined on a round trip.

Mejías continues on his path of attending to the minor knowledge, to those vital keys that are transmitted more from the doing than from leaving his mark: I am interested in how certain learning circulates without the need for explanation, how they are infected from observation or shared practice, as in craft workshops or in the inheritance of unwritten traditions. She herself seeks to learn from artisans in very different areas (glass, sewing, braided and the same wood) and leaves space for the visitor to their exhibitions to obtain conclusions of that work.