Residence on earth
To the Magdalena studio street kids in Lima, and to those who have dedicated their lives to giving them a life.
“Is that my face?” Tomás turns the mask over in his hands, disconcerted, his expression wavering between pleasure and anxiety. It’s his turn to work now. He bends over his friend who’s just lain down with his face turned towards him, eyes closed, framed by a large protective sheet like in an operating theatre. Tomás carefully coats the visible skin with an oily substance before applying a layer of fresh plaster that he’s mixed in a bowl, taking care to make a hole for each nostril into which the nasal pipet will be inserted for breathing. Each of them, in turn, makes their neighbour’s mask. Here’s his cast, a living record of him bearing his real features, fixed forever more. Each of them can see themselves as others see them. That’s me and that one over there is you. I recognise you.
The concentration in the studio is palpable, everybody carefully repeating the gestures the artist showed them, in the correct order. A work of art requires orderliness and precision, progressing slowly with each session. Masks keep on being added, face after face, each confirming an identity.
Tomás is fourteen, although his marked face and look of an old warrior up to no good make him appear much older. Some of the kids bear nasty scars, gashes made by knives and bumps from former fractures. All of a sudden a joke or friendly nudge make them burst out laughing, the eyes of an enchanted youngster lighting up, childhood barely hidden beneath all that adolescent muscle. The kids are between five and fifteen, but are ageless. None of them have had a childhood. None of them understand how to play, forever on their guard. They’ve retained a certain violence from living on the streets, suspicious and resentful of everything, permanently on the defensive as well as on the attack. It’s safer to make things up, facts, names, dates, avoiding laying oneself open, for things are all too easily said or denied. In any case, truth is elusive – nothing is stable, nothing is certain. Tomorrow doesn’t exist. Will there ever be a tomorrow? And what will it be made of? If it does come, and nothing is less certain, it can only be as unsettled, blurred and dangerous as yesterday. Words too are unstable, stories changing from one moment to the next and from one speaker to the next. A first name is never permanent. In a world without future, without desire, how can “I” mean anything?
The masks in this sculpture identify the children’s faces. They reveal their identity where words have failed. The sculpture also reveals a desire, shaped over a long series of yesterdays, todays and tomorrows, a desire to achieve something, to at least see something through to completion.
The sculpture exacts duties, first and foremost that of coming back to it. Every gesture takes time. Every gesture requires time, time for preparation, drying, making moulds, shaping and assembling, time put aside for another’s work, for it to find its place and for incorporating it into his own, time for the artist who explains, guides and adds the finishing touches.
Returning, obeying. They have to obey the laws of the house that welcomes them. That’s what they came for: to learn to return, and to accept the reference points that distinguish places and time. That which is unstable finds stability here.
Olga Luna, a Peruvian artist living in Paris, came up with this artistic project as a way of training and socialising those participating. It took three years to complete, at the end of which there was a wall composed of 100 lifesize heads inserted in light wooden compartments. Olga Luna consciously chose to use commonplace, inexpensive materials, namely plaster and clay. The young apprentices were surprisingly receptive, quickly understanding the need for discipline in the various fabrication processes, starting with a respect for the materials used. Fresh clay is unstable and is highly malleable, while dry, it breaks. The children adapted to the organisation of this ongoing group project. Far from the chaotic, violent anarchy of the street, they jointly made use of a skill through careful repetition of mastered gestures. It was a means of discovering confidence, in oneself and in others. For, in order for the work to advance and be brought to a conclusion, they had to demonstrate duty and respect both to things and to their peers and teachers, temporarily forgetting their touchy revendications between themselves as well as with adults – that never-ending attempt to soothe the continually felt pain of wounds that have never fully healed. The work of art is the other’s face which the creator becomes responsible for.
In the studio, therefore, there are faces and clay. Clay is worth nothing, it’s everywhere, like trees in the forest. Tomás comes from the forest. He says he came for the clay. He’s familiar with clay. He applies the clay to the hollows of the plaster negative. Once taken out of the mould, the deathly white of the plaster face is replaced by the softish pink of the clay one and then nestled in a wooden case, stuck to the bottom with putty. One box alongside another like scaling a wall. A wall of faces. On each closed eyelid a black marble like a pupil. The mask takes on a strange look – its features are recognisable, but its look is different. The object escapes and becomes a work.
One day Tomás brings a bag full of clay. “I recognised its colour. It’s flexible. It doesn’t break and it’s easy to work.” Tomás is no longer content repeating the movements he’s been taught. This work is his. He collects his material from the slopes and wasteland and kneads it. Abandoned or rough areas also provide the wherewithal for feeding the sculpture and giving the group something to work with. Act in order to construct.
Olga Luna has already made clay faces in Paris. First she made clay paintings, then clay masks. On a number of occasions she has exhibited a wall composed of a hundred heads, based on the same principle as the Lima wall, except that the heads were smaller and the faces were invented. They don’t resemble anyone in particular. She also photogaphs these reduced heads with their shining boot-button eyes and displays enlarged versions like portraits. In parallel with this, Olga Luna is working on the Harlequin theme – maybe all those heads were in fact already Harlequin heads. Arlecchino from the commedia dell’arte is the manservant of a thousand cunning tricks with as many facets as colourful lozenges on his livery. He plays all roles, inventing situations, never at a loss for expedients, the man who can make everything possible and therefore a possible mirror for all those who look at him. One hundred heads or just one head, it’s all the same. It’s one and all at the same time. And one hundred symbolises them all. The wall of a hundred heads is a mirror. Every passerby can recognise himself in it.
Unlike the Paris masks, the Lima ones distilled real features that can all be recognised. Nevertheless, their glass-eyed frozen stares make them the timeless parents of the Harlequin heads. With their own portraits, these young collaborators have provided us with a mirror of ourselves, exactly as Olga Luna intended. Their faces are also our own, as they might well have been had we been born, like them, on that side of history. The work of art looks at us and is brought to life by our gaze. The representation offered only affects us if something in it succeeds in moving us. Making something implies giving of oneself and offering it to another in order for him to make it his own. The children’s repetitive gestures produced a sculpture which now belongs to those who look at it and those who exhibit it, but it will nonetheless continue to speak of those who made it.
Hélène Lassalle
Paris, December 2001 Hélène Lassalle is Head Curator at the Centre de Recherche et Restauration des Musées de France (Research and Restoration Centre for the Museums of France).