SOFT GYMNASIUM (Gallery text)

"Gimnasio blando” [Soft Gymnasium] is an installation of devices where different textile techniques are exercised. The workspace is transformed into a gymnasium. Instead of machines for working the muscles, the focus is on the work of the minuscule through felting, traditional embroidery, needle punching, Russian punch needle, and various types of fabric construction.

The body manifests and reveals surfaces that account for an exercise. The body that embroiders is different from the one that weaves and the one that felts. The performative dimension of textiles is not only found in the reading of the resulting textile but also in the act of making itself. In “Gimnasio blando" the techniques are the exercises that invite the body to be in the space in various ways. Rules and operations that enable, condition, limit, and enhance states. Thinking with the hands, with the whole body. The devices acquire marks from those imprints. A moment in each place. An exercise routine.

Stretch
Tune
Tempt

Waiting for the color to emerge. Receiving it on a raw cloth. Boiling, smelling, saturating. I immerse my hands when the water is cold, but when it's hot, my fingers extend into wooden sticks. Sometimes my hands also transform into soft fabrics that grip the incandescent pot lids. From an imperceptible yellow (onion skin), pink (avocado pit), and green (purple onion skin), the color is emphasized day by day. The more persistence, the stronger it becomes. Then, fragments of slimy vegetables with almost nothing left except for that thin layer that allows them to exist, sneak in and are thrown in. Already eaten and squeezed, they have given me everything. What more can I ask of them than nourishment and color?

Sewing
Cooking

Soaking the fabrics in starch. Stabilizing and stiffening the textile sheet. Stretching and preparing the heat. I rest the incandescent metal, and steam emerges from the sheet. The starch is cooked with heat. It hardens. The color and the medium to stiffen transform the fabrics into nourishment, making them energizing to continue with the next exercise.