A Tapestry of Connections

The Latin etymology of the word ‘connections’ has as its main meanings ‘to tie’ and ‘to unite’. We know that a tapestry is made by joining threads, sometimes tied together. In other words, a tapestry of connections is, first and foremost, a statement – both material and conceptual – of the idea of connecting with one another, of binding ourselves together.

To one another, to things, to nature.

And yet, the word ‘connections’ has today become trivialised in relation to technology, particularly digital technology. It is not, however, these cold, electrically charged connections that we wish to address here, but rather those that define our condition as beings in need of community and, above all, as desiring beings.

Art enhances the potential for desire through gestures that affirm its unique capacity to connect us, to bind us. Art offers and offers itself. A rare thing in these times when development has been exchanged for prosperity.

The exhibition we are now viewing ironically foreshadows the idea of being connected. Here, being connected has nothing to do with the digital devices that now dominate our relationships. Here, being connected is embodied in various realities. The artist presents us with the power of colour as a catalyst for connection. Whether on large canvases or small pillows scattered throughout the space, the profusion of colour is so intense that it is impossible not to establish a connection with it.

Furthermore, the artist offers us the chance to connect with her imagination through a gesture of desire and solidarity that bridges the gap between her and the exhibition visitor. We are, unfortunately, all too familiar – through increasingly trivialised media coverage – with the installation of large canvases suspended in the midst of nature, referred to as ‘camouflaged’ because they mimic natural camouflage to conceal heavy weaponry in the countless wars of the present day. Through her suspended canvases, the artist connects us to another reality. No longer to the blackened grey of wars, but to the almost psychedelic colour palette of her ambition to connect, of her belief in others. She even invites us to participate in this gesture of longing, in a connection which, unlike mechanical connections, demands time from us: to lie down on a bed, to rest our head on a pillow and to contemplate, and to dream.

The colour of her craftsmanship thus becomes a tapestry/tool of resistance against this timeless digital age. Not in a rhetorical sense, but in the unique way that art asserts its questions: through the creation of various objects that invite us to pause. A contemplative pause that is not passive, as we were told for so long, but one that is, on the contrary, utterly active in the search for answers to the questions posed – deliberately left unanswered – by the objects on display.

A contemplation which, in its intimacy, connects us to these objects in a free and untamed way (unlike digital connections) and allows us to hum the words of a famous song silently by a Scottish band from the late 1990s called The Soup Dragons. In that song, entitled ‘Freedom’, the chorus goes as follows: ‘Don’t be afraid of your freedom;

Freedom; I’m free to do what I want any old time; I said I’m free to do what I want any old time; I say love me, hold me; Love me, hold me cause I’m free.

Perhaps it is out of step with the times, out of touch with a society absorbed in controlled virtual connections. And yet, its power highlights the intensity of the simplicity of colour, of the vivid and joyful hues that invite us to this exercise in freedom, however individual it may be.

Art has this power; let us make the most of it.

Fernando José Pereira