Pinewood and birch wood
50 x 20 x 20 cm.
Jan. - Feb. 2012
This is the second piece of a project which I developed during the year I stayed in Sweden as an erasmus. The project theme was identity: what makes a person different? what makes each person special? what is an identity made of? why do we have the need to be so unique, yet so integrated in a group? what do we use to define our identity? this are some of the questions that define the proyect.
An identity can't be created on your own. Afterall, your identity defines yourself in front of other people, it's what distinguishes you. Therefore, as an identity has a social component, it's only natural that society has an influence over it.
That's what this proyect is about, how an identity is greatly defined by society. Starting from where you are born, or where you've travelled, that gives you a language, which already makes your way of looking at the world subjective; that also applies to your culture, what you were taught at school, where do you live...
But it's also focused on how people influence you: your tastes, your ideas, your way of knowing the world is also marked by people, maybe they are people who you met only once, or your teachers, or your firends or family. Maybe they influenced you in a positive way, maybe as an opposite reaction of what you don't want to do or be, but everything and everyone influences you.
Made of a trunk on it's upper zone, and with different kinds of wood in the base, this different pieces of wood are the support of the upper piece, which is massif in contrast with all the small pieces of different woods which support it. The trunk wouldn't be able to sustain itself without the smaller pieces, just as nobody has an identity without the help and the influence of other people. I made this sculpture breaking all the guidelines I was given on my previous years of studies: gluing the wood pieces "against fiber", and giving them colour and wax coating before sculpting the upper zone, also gluing those pieces to a massive trunk. I encountered some problems but I also I learnt how to use the big machines, that are forbidden for students in Spain, I got to colour wood with anilines for the first time, I experienced with difficult gluings, and carved for the first time a trunk.
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