The Ideals 2012. (Tribute to the Cigar Makers). With music by Leopoldo Amigo.
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They still dance in the hazy light of memory
Monique Bastiaans's initial idea was for a completely different installation from the one now on display at the Las Cigarreras exhibition hall. It was a project that had been in the making for several years and we were excited to present it in Alicante. However, the final proposed location for the exhibition changed everything.
Bastiaans always places great importance on the location where he will exhibit, the space or environment that houses his work. He usually works on each project with a specific location in mind and pays attention to its particular characteristics, whether it's an exhibition hall or an open space, whether urban or one dominated by nature, for which he has a special predilection. He seeks to integrate the work into its environment and to create more than a dialogue, a relationship of self-involvement, almost out of necessity.
The degree of interaction between the work and its surroundings varies. It is presented in terms of space, light, materials, color, sound, or even aroma. The interaction is presented in subtle ways, such as the movement of the breeze and the reflections of the sun on the nylon mesh in "Midday Celebrated Inside" (2001), or by highlighting the stridency between synthetic materials and organic forms, as in the 2007 exhibition "Vertical Neighbors." In any case, there is always a respect for the very nature of the environment.
"Who am I to torture trees with the intention of making them better than before?" he asked himself in Ribarroja del Turia while working on the "Goodbye Sadness" intervention project, which transformed a grove of orange trees killed by sadness into a garden of color and hope by wrapping the trees in red, fuchsia, or ruby fabric. His respect for the environment is also one of the fundamental reasons for the ephemeral nature of most of Bastiaans's work.
The architectural space of the Alicante factory's warehouses, still awaiting renovation, surprised and captivated Bastiaans from the first visit. These enormous rooms, revealed through the chiaroscuro created by the natural light from the large windows on the peeling walls, provide a vivid idea of the working environment during the tobacco factory's years of operation. However, what sparked a decisive interest in this case was the history of the factory and, especially, of the workers.
When it was normal for women to work at home or in the fields, the Alicante factory employed more than 5,000 cigar makers during a period when the city's population grew slightly above 15,000. The impact of this enormous workforce on the domestic economy led to certain changes in the city's social and political spheres. The cigar makers established formulas to balance their lives with long hours, which in many cases extended to long commutes. They organized to provide meals, healthcare, and, in general, to live in the factory; they even started a school to care for the children of those women who had no family to leave them with. The strength of solidarity and unity in the face of various adversities encouraged the development of a unionist and activist spirit that was the precursor to the feminist struggle in the city and has left an emotional mark on the memory of Alicante residents.
Collective memory tends to be positive and enthusiastic, especially after the recent institutional recovery of the land for public use. We all consider the cultural use of a building appropriate, which, in addition to possessing appropriate architectural characteristics, historically served as the source of social concerns linked to ideals of progress and culture that are questioned by few today. However, despite recent published studies, this popular memory is also vague and imprecise, neglecting, for example, the harsh working conditions of different eras in order to highlight the social achievements of the cigar makers.
Minor misrepresentations frequently occur in the construction of memories. Some facts are exaggerated, and it's normal for certain data to be overlooked; objective interpretations are left out of the record; they are of no interest. The influence, in turn, of possible emotional burdens of various kinds on the memory construction process allows it to be compared to the processes of mythologizing, where language is used in an allegorical manner and incongruity is disguised as paradox. Over time, the deviation can become aberrant.
In homage to the achievements of the cigar makers and, above all, to the illusion that the image we have constructed of that combative spirit still inspires today, Monique Bastiaans applies an equally allegorical syntax. Dispensing with precise definitions, she reconstructs the image of that illusion through oversized figurations of certain elements that refer to easily assimilated clichés of factory work and the spirit of the cigar makers. Thus, behind the three large figures in the work "Don't Dream It, Be It" (which it is unclear whether they are cigars or giant cicadas, or the nymph-chrysalides from which everything else will emerge), we find a dance of joyful, flying fabrics, "The Ideals" themselves, in front of an enormous tray of large cigars, titled "1888," in allusion to the first revolt led by the cigar makers of Alicante. Poor lighting emulates the light of memory and casts beams that pass through a nebula that plunges us into the dense atmosphere and unhealthy air of the ships, while from an undefined place, as if coming from a distant memory, between the whirring of the fans and the squealing of the smoke machine, we hear something4 that contains resonances of the voices of the cigarette makers singing on their way to the factory.
As in many previous works—from the 1996 “Jellyfish” on Las Arenas Beach in Valencia to the 2008 “Navels Gazing at Each Other”—the three nymphs in “Don't Dream It, Be It” play with the tensions that arise between organic forms and synthetic materials. The figures' apparent robustness from a distance reveals transparency when held up to the light, with intense reddish tones from the thick walnut paste that covers their delicate lace skin. The unstable balance they adopt on the ground, half-hanging from one end, conveys a lightness that contradicts the weight suggested by the format. Mimicry is avoided—it is not important that they resemble cicadas or cigars—in order to highlight the visual values, which are versatile and allow for a threshold of uncertainty regarding the object and provoke a kind of perceptual unease. There is no desire to deceive, although Bastiaans does seek to awaken the senses; There's a desire to stimulate doubt and question: Do cigar makers have anything to do with cicadas? Does the cigar get its name from its resemblance to cicadas?
"1888," the fake cigar tray with its oversized cigars—the product of the workers' labors—has the same goal; although in this case, some concession is made to mimic the texture of the papier-mâché, so similar to cigar skin that the artist decided not to use the real leaf to cover the pieces. The dimness of the indirect light also produces a trompe-l'oeil effect in relation to the depth of the cigars, which are actually hemispherical heads attached to the wall. The scale contributes to the confusion.
We see through various works, such as "Moony" from 2002 and "Hemelzweet" from 2006, that Bastiaans is interested in the rhythms that emerge from the irregularities in the repetition of spherical or rounded elements. Serialization is a resource that reinforces the vision of the cigar makers as a group; but it also provides a certain degree of spirituality. In any case, she takes the opportunity to place the PA system behind the supposed drum, the music that composer Leopoldo Amigo—a frequent collaborator on the artist's projects—recorded specifically for the installation. Once again, we are confronted with a question: Is the result of these women's work measured by material parameters or does it have spiritual dimensions?
The skirts in "Las ideales" constitute the main element of the installation, the one that directly refers to the cigar makers. This is another iterated resource. It was presented in the 2007 exhibition "Plaisir de fleurir" at the Sala Parpalló in Valencia, where its agitation alluded to the springtime joy of flowers; later, in a slightly different version, under the title "Merrily," it was integrated alongside works resembling high-heeled shoes or pearl necklaces in the exhibition "Lunes, miércoles y por la noche" (Monday, Wednesday and Night) at Carlet, in a context that referred to the sophistication and extravagance of women's fashion. In both cases, a single piece was exhibited; here, for the first time, the work is comprised of five skirts forming a group.
The idea of a group is emphasized by the chromatic unity of the ensemble, which prevails despite the disparity in texture, tone, and details of the fabrics. This variety confirms that the groups are composed of individuals. With nuances, the fabrics are yellow, a bright and cheerful color that directly refers to a proto-union group of women workers, with a feminist tendency, known as "the yellows."
Stirred by groups of fans, the fluttering of "the ideals" recreates the movements of skirts in a dance and conveys a sense of freedom that must be very similar to that felt by the cigar makers themselves during the dances held on special days and rehearsed in the courtyards during breaks. By referring to the joy emanating from the workers' dances, Bastiaans evokes in us an anachronistic and strange feeling of relief and satisfaction at the recognition of the cigar makers' contribution to the emancipation and freedom of women in society.
All of this might lead us to believe that, indeed, "The Ideals" is Bastiaans's project with the greatest inclination toward social or anthropological issues. However, the language used is not the most appropriate, as it limits the objective scope of a reflection posed in these fields. The installation is structured in accordance with the same allegorical rhetoric that permeates the processes of constructing emotional memory and identity itself, a primary logic with associations of very basic ideas, such as the relationships of proximity and similarity in primitive magical-mystical thought. It is a logic that lies at the root of everyone's epistemology and, therefore, is almost instinctive. However, it is complicated by tropes, parallelisms, antagonisms, polyvalences, paradoxes, and other linguistic twists and turns. Strategies that allow us to become aware of emotional communication while addressing the need for cultural awareness.
A multidisciplinary and experimental visual language, which allows for very open syntactical registers, proves efficient and versatile in reflecting the polyvalences, paradoxes, and fields of vagueness of allegorical discourse. The keys to the artist's aesthetic language are revealed in the play of establishing relationships, insinuating them, simulating them, in the manipulation of the poetics inherent in the things that interact.
Boye Llorens Peters
Denia, July 18, 2012