Native

The forest ist everything. (with Giovannina Sequeira)

1. Innate

2. Uneath

3. Immersion

4. Belong

5. Tangle

6. Flame

7. Foliate

8. Gather

9. Empathy

10. Instinct

Everything takes place in the forest, since this is the universe where every fantasy is shaped and fired, every dream, every fear, every enigma and most of all, every feeling. The sounds of our most primitive past are to be found in the forest, where the lights and the shadows of our vital outburst are drawn too.

The moment we get deep into the woods we are getting into the territory of the mysteries, which pushes the creation of necessary myths with the purpose of guiding us down this labyrinth of questions, lights and shadows, discoveries and losses and definitely, intangible emotions which are part of the individual fascination. Witches and fairies live together with two-headed dragons and two kinds of ogres: the aggressive and monstrous ones and the noble and tender ones. As a matter of fact, we all have a mental forest-landscape which is a part of our most emotional and darkest memories.

The forest is both a guardian of time and author of life. The forest is a loop. The forest is EVERYTHING.

The artists Irene Cruz (Madrid, Spain. 1987) and Giovannina Sequeira (Managua, Nicaragua. 1988), have joined in this kind of artistic venture in order to put together ten videos about the relationship between the human being and nature, particularly, with the winter forest as a backdrop which carries a clearly romantic signature. This work, called NATIVE, has a strong performative character in which both artists (sometimes one of them and other times both of them) act as actresses-mediums interacting with the natural scenario as if it were a mystical act and an act of knowledge to understand the origins of the human being. NATIVE is a work composed by ten actions which gather up the essence of this act of initiation of feeling and recognizing oneself in nature. The narrative structure of every piece is simple and subtle. Therefore, the speech has a great capacity of poetic and emotional transmission, plenty of sensorial and metaphorical which set the audience in a privileged place as the only witness: a voyeur, hidden in the bushes, who quietly takes part in an act of initiation encounters between the human being and his already forgotten natural origins.

Ciuco Gutiérrez

As winter ends, just before spring, Irene Cruz and Giovannina Sequieira will present their new show HABITAT/NATIVE for the first time. Over three weeks, they will transform Berlin's PPC gallery through photographs, video and performance, poetically framing their experience of the landscape with a series of playful and sensitive works.

They'll lead us down woodland paths to share moments of tender connection and antagonism with environment. As we travel with these two artists, they'll quietly reveal new layers in our perception of nature and remind us how intense our personal relationship is to the power of the planet. They aim to offer us a fresh and sensitive mix between conception and perception.

Using paper, screens, and the human form they describe a world where the physicality and sensitivity of the human experience relates to nature. Where their own bodies become a medium, and where their experimentation reflects experiential perception. Through images and performance, the artists invite us to enter the landscape though playful and beautiful work reveling in both the aesthetic and the personal. They crystallize an experience of nature and ask us to question whether this beauty is inherent or if our sensitivity makes it so.

Tania Gomes (PPC Gallery)