The blind maps

The  blind maps series was made in 1999 and revolves around the idea of the search of home lost, metaphor of the search of our own identity or process of individuation. The series illustrated several moments of this initiatory journey undertaken by a character, somehow similar to the one proposed by Joseph Campbell in his work The hero of thousand faces, in the search of the essence of their own identity.

The painting that opens the series, Rise and fall of J. V. Marjov was exhibited in the exhibition Miradas distintas. Distintas miradas. Valencian Landscape in the 20th Century (Museum of Century XIX, Valencia, 2002). It depicts a character ascending in a balloon filled with books, with the feet hanging, grabbing the ropes, at the very moment when he seems to decide to jump, to leave the globe. A industrial landscape, of smoky factories located on the shore of the sea, is distinguished from the balloon and seems that it will be the “real” world in the future, in comparison to the world of literary fiction.

The painting Eternal move closed this series and represents a polar landscape in which a traveler looks through a hole made in an icy lake, through which he sees a cozy home. The vision of the end of the trip, the home heated by a fireplace in the middle of the gelid environment, offered a paradoxical image: the end of the travel and the inaccessibility of the home, the hard journey without prize. Lost homeland as a metaphor for what we crave and which we know that it is intimately elusive. Lost homeland as a metaphor of discouragement and rootlessness. Eternal move was exhibited in the exhibition Plural. Spanish Art in the 21st Century (Spanish Senate building. Madrid, 2002)