SEMPRE

 

 

I'm not sure if there is wool from Portugal or Spain. I find myself, like Saramago, looking at the fish on the border and wondering if they are Portuguese or Spanish as they swam in the Douro from one side to the other of a line that exists only in our imagination. Everything is complicated by the fact that the Merino sheep originated from Morocco and reached the peninsula in the Middle Ages, where it was further divided into numerous varieties in Europe based on a basic classification of white and black. Three species are found in Portugal: Beira Baixa, Merino White, and Merino Black. However, originally, there is white and black. The absolute perfection of a division is that. I'm not sure if there is Spanish or Portuguese wool, but there is white and black.

 

Throughout her career, Sonia Navarro has sewn many types of fabric, materials that are important to her work. I will not return to the discourse of the medium, which has already been forgotten, nor will it be easy to work with felt without thinking of Beuys. In Sonia's work, there is consistently a distinction between esparto and synthetics, encompassing two extremes. Esparto is cultivated in the place of its origin, and it is abundantly found throughout Portugal and Spain, particularly in Murcia, the region in the southeast of Spain where Sonia was born, where it is a crucial component of the landscape. There, it is crafted by female artisans who produce forms that may surpass the oldest structures in this ancient kingdom. But synthetic fabrics shouldn't look any different. They are oil, which comes from the underground, where there are no fish swimming from one place to another, but also where there are no borders. Synthetic fabrics are made everywhere in the same way, and the production process in garments is mechanical from a pattern used to distribute a piece throughout the world. In theory, everything is the same, so the Industrial Revolution, its granddaughter globalization and its great-great-granddaughter Amazon would have achieved a utopia of homogenization. Everything would be so equal that it would not make any difference whether a fish was from one side or the other, and the sheep could be white or black, it doesn't matter.

 

Sonia approaches the two materials with different goals. She has approached esparto grass with the utmost honesty, working with the women who make it. The pieces in synthetic leather speak of something else and maintain something essential in the forms she extracted from the avant-garde as well as from her biography, and the feet always reach the ground. They are always at the bottom, and a work of Sonia's can never be hung upside down.

 

During the depressing post-war period, Franco's Spain faced a shortage of essential commodities, and Salazar's Portugal emerged as the primary supplier through the estraperlo, commonly known as smuggling in Spain. This activity allowed thousands of families across the border to survive under the watchful eye of fish that had no memory. Everything arrived, but the coffee was especially sought after. In Spain, we have not experienced excellent coffee, and I have always held the belief that it was due to the excessive watering down during the post-war period. We inherited a horrible drink from that time, reheated coffee, a boiled coffee which some people liked, perhaps because they were used to poverty. There is also a tale of smuggling candy, which is the tangible manifestation of childhood happiness, among numerous others. Spain was unable to return goods; however, in Portugal, consumers expressed a strong preference for products made with crochet. Wool from Merino sheep was transformed into rugs by impoverished women, thereby balancing the clandestine trade balance, and crossed the border in front of the same fish as previously, or were they already different?

Always the border. A fronteira sempre.

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The journey of the objects can be equally interesting as the objects themselves, and it may even be the reason for their creation. Sonia often sews routes. Her paintings can sometimes be understood as maps that establish paths that women, those who crochet and with sewing machines, have been building over cities. Her stitches appear and disappear rhythmically. Pieces that depict the journey of materials, shapes, and the artist themselves are works that represent journeys. The road is the opposite of the border. You don't have to cross it, you have to go through it. You always have to go further, the border stops you and says no. 

The road always says yes. 

O caminho diz sempre sim.

 

 

Nacho Ruiz, November 2024

Director and Co-Founder of Galeria T20

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