Sonia Boué, Arena y Mar, mixed media on canvas, 2014
For the first time next week I will exhibit alongside Jonathan Moss in a show entitled EXILE, which focuses on the internment camps of France in which Spanish exiles were held captive at the fall of Spain in 1939. We’ll be showing abstract landscapes and videos; I’ll create a pop-up installation for the Private View. It will also be the first time I show these particular works in a public space beyond my studio.
I won’t list all the elements that have stacked against me in the run up to the show – suffice to say that significant others have been called away to New York, washing machines have created copious fountains mid-wash, and certain family members have developed sudden and pressing needs for additional support – all of which leave my to-do list unattended.
These days, whenever obstacles are put in my path in the course of my work, I recall the exile experience. 76 years ago members of my family were subjected to such terror and hardship that washing machine malfunction fades into complete insignificance. What luxury! I have water – it’s not in the right place but it’s clean and literally on tap. The show will go up – it has to, to honour their memory.
There’s also the tendency to prevaricate one must deal with. Is blogging right now a displacement activity? What about that list? Well no. I need to write about why I’m choosing not to sell my work this time round, and why instead I’m choosing to keep this growing body of work around the theme of my father’s exile safeguarded. You see this work is made from the inside. It’s outward expression has no monetary value that I can or want to place on it. The work has to stay pure and mustn’t scatter. As my dear friend Brent remarked – the work has to stay together until you’ve told the story – and he’s right.
I have to take the long view on these particular pieces, and I’m ambitious for them. I want these paintings to travel. That’s it, I’ve said it right there. These paintings have a yearning to go home to the place of my origins. Spain. Obstacles will surely come my way – not least of which will be finding a location where this work will be welcomed, and yet I know this place has to exist. Spanish politics with the longstanding issue of contested memory presents a hefty spanner in the works of this dream. Important to say it though.
Meanwhile, because artist’s have to live and should be paid, commissions will be gladly taken.
