Yo aplico el color
Belén Rodríguez
Belén Rodríguez
Yo aplico el color, 2021
Bleached and ecologically dyed poplin
340 x 800 cm
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Installation view: Abundant Futures. Works from the TBA21 Collection, Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía C3A, Córdoba, Spain, 2022
Photo: Roberto Ruiz
- Date
- 2022
- Medium
- Bleached and ecologically dyed poplin
- Dimension
- 345 x 800 cm
- Credit
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
- This artwork is part of the donation and long-term loan from TBA21 to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Details
Yo aplico el color is a work closely related to the project "I dye", made for CA2M in 2018.
In this project, Belén Rodríguez creates a series of large-scale canvases that take as a reference the verses of a poem written by an Aztec Indian dyer, included in the Florentine Codex (1540-1585). The author describes his task in a cascade of verses in the first person, blurring the boundaries, and making man and colour become one and the same thing: "I make chilli red / I turn myself into chilli red".
The poem reflects the popular knowledge of the Americas in the dyeing of textiles, and what today we know corresponds to a chemical process, in another time and place offered a magical, poetic and primary vision of colour. In this way, each curtain in Rodríguez's piece is a small rite of passage towards the journey through the exhibition which, in turn, gives access to the different images in the exhibition. Images that unfold like canvases in their condition as images: reversible, enveloping, tactile.