“Theories on Freedom,” 2009-2011 is based on my thoughts on the contemporary experience and understanding of freedom. I took my inspiration from the media and the ocean. We are bombarded every day by news with specific political-philosophical agendas to a point that there is nothing to believe; even inspiring stories become suspicious by the way they are marketed… and then I let myself be enchanted, once again, by the sea. This blue liquid road and deep obstacle provokes my imagination. The blue sea represents the way out and the frontier. It maps stories about freedom…and slavery. The color and the wonders hidden below the ocean’s surface are the sources of my stories. I wonder about what the ocean brings and what it takes, in the back and forth of the waves reaching the shore. I wonder about the sinking ships of different empires, about the lives lost at sea, about the reason for the journey, all those treasures! The finding of ocean routes that defined the world we live in, that gave life to the empire of our times. That is the past that informs our present. For example in the piece titled “In my Floating World, Landscape of Paradise”, a soft sculpture, I collected inner tubes in different sizes and in a variety of shades of blue. I also bandaged the surface of some of the inner tubes with photographic images of the sea on which I have drawn a variety of symbols from my visual repertoire that refer to the memory of the sea. I composed a floating landscape with these inner tubes, creating a randomly organic form connected by electrical ties, sometimes tied very tightly, a suggestion of the struggles hidden within the deep blue beauty. Also each of the inner tubes carries an airport baggage tag that identifies the intended destination of the waves, which is New York, alluding to the contemporary promised land of the free.
Scherezade Garcia
www.scherezade.net