Projects

Honey and Lemon

Rooted in the unconscious, the mother-daughter bond appears to psychoanalysis so obscure that Freud, taking stock of his research, admits that he failed to illuminate it. He therefore entrusts it to the artists who, 'on the path of truth, always precede us'.
Gabriela Spector accepts this invitation and, as a great artist as she is, with her exquisite works of painting, sculpture, graphics and embroidery, leads us, with effects of beauty, truth and care, through the real and imaginary labyrinths of the engaging mother-daughter relationship. An original, unique and irreducible bond that, for better or worse, makes us what we are.

Silvia Vegetti Finzi, Milan, 8 April 2024.

Oil painting on canvas: the daughter in the foreground and the mother in the background.

Thy presence

Oil on canvas - H 50 x W 35 [cm].

Coloured-pencil drawing on paper and threads: the mother in the foreground and the daughter in the background.

Blue Thread

Drawing. Coloured pencils on paper and threads - H 33 x W 26 [cm].

I always think of the worst-case scenario. Right now I am calculating how long it would take me to run out of the car and reach Nina if she suddenly ran into the pool and dived in. I call it “rescue distance”, that is what I call that variable distance that separates me from my daughter, and I spend half the day calculating it, even though I always risk more than I should... It is something I inherited from my mother. “I want you close to me,” she said, “let’s keep a rescue distance.”

Fever Dream (Distancia de rescate), Samanta Schweblin.

Coloured-pencil drawing on paper and threads: mother and daughter in a tangle of threads.

Tangles

Drawing - H 33 x W 26 [cm].

-You... do you still love me a little?
-I love you very much, Mum...
-I was afraid you would hate me.
-Sometimes I hated you too, but even in those moments I never stopped loving you...

High Heels, Pedro Almodóvar

Pencil drawing on paper and threads: a woman hugging herself.

My Hug

Drawing. Pencil and threads on paper - H 33 x W 26 [cm].

27
To be in any form, what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)
If nothing lay more develop'd the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.
Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.

Song of Myself, Walt Whitman.

Oil painting on canvas: a pensive young woman with a perplexed face.

Melancholy

Oil on canvas - H 100 x W 50 [cm].

“Philosophy as the creative and essential action of human existence is in the fundamental mood of melancholy.”

Martin Heidegger

Oil painting on canvas: a pensive young woman lying in a foetal position.

Nest, the Refuge

Oil on canvas - H 100 x W 50 [cm].

Thinking is something like the silent dialogue the soul has with itself... The essence of thought, the thought I am referring to, is not knowledge, but rather the discernment between good and evil, between beauty and ugliness, and what I seek is for thinking to give people the strength to avoid disasters in those moments when everything seems lost.

Hannah Arendt

Coloured-pencil drawing on paper: a young hand pushing away the mother’s face.

Honey - Lemon

Drawing. Pencil on paper - H 70 x W 50 [cm].

Distancing oneself from the mother without interrupting the relationship involves the interplay of two opposing forces: the love that unites and the hatred that divides, instances destined to produce a tangle of ambivalences and conflicts between 'I want to be like you' and 'I want to be different from you'. For her part, the mother experiences the same tensions, so that maternal passion, which is much more than a feeling, proceeds reciprocally to that of the daughter, oscillating between come closer and stay away. Taking the right distance proves to be an endless task, but precisely for this reason particularly captivating.

Silvia Vegetti Finzi, Milan, 8 April 2024.

Coloured-pencil drawing on paper: a little girl taking refuge in her mother’s arms.

Honey - Lemon

Drawing. Pencil on paper - H 70 x W 50 [cm].

It is difficult for the daughter to become herself by passing from specular to individuation. Just as it is difficult for the mother to let her go, to accept that she becomes a different person from the one she had dreamed and desired. The pendulum swings from being too close to being too distant, without ever finding an equidistant position... The important thing is that the sweetness of honey, prevailing over the acidity of lemon, safeguards their 'restless friendship'.

Silvia Vegetti Finzi, Milan, 8 April 2024.

Oil painting on canvas: Mother, daughter and a swallow.

We and the Swallow

Oil on canvas - H 80 x W 60 [cm].

Swift traveller
tireless
of gentle
and gleaming mantle
you deliver your flight
zenithal
incessant
free
symphonic
...
Your flight is twilight and celestial.
Oh acrobat of infinite space!
Oh messenger of Aeolus!
Jubilant citizen
of the whole world
exempt from visas and winters.
...

Pilgrim Odes, Carlos Martian.

Oil painting on canvas: moving embrace between mother and daughter.

Hug

Oil on canvas - H 80 x W 60 [cm].

Life leads the authentic person along varied and winding paths.
Often it holds back the force of his walking, then he returns to his road.
Already an eloquent content manages to pour freely into words,
already the heavy burden of knowledge must be enclosed in silence.
But where two people are akin in the depths of their hearts,
they break the fortress even of bronze or steel.
And where people understand each other in the depths of their souls,
their words are sweet and strong like the scent of jasmine.

I Ching

A work that uses the zip symbolically. When the zip is open, they move apart, and when it is closed, they come closer.

The Zip (El cierre) - detachment

Pencils, thread, zip and watercolours on paper - H 40 x W 50 [cm].