Personally challenged during my visit to Estela López Solís’ Susurrantes in 2017, I express in the selection and interpretation of the works, the intimate connection felt in front of them and will encourage visitors to explore their own sensibilities in turn.
Mexican-born artist living in the Eastern Townships since 2011, Estela López Solís appropriates the dark thoughts that people entrust to her during performances or residencies.
In the center of the muffled atmosphere that emanates from the room, the artist embroiders by hand these sentences on used fabrics. On the walls, the textile works of the Susurrantes series embody a trace of these encounters and the gesture of embroidery evokes the duration of a shared moment. Her discreet gestures, done in white on white, underline the introspective, intimate and secret character of the testimonies that are delivered to her. Between visible and invisible, their tenuous aspect also expresses the subtle and obstinate reminiscence of thoughts that undermine us, linked to the expectations and judgments of others. The sound installation inhabiting the space plunges us into the heart of this stubborn litany.
As a counterpoint, the embossing of the Ombres series imprints in the very material of the paper the indelible mark with which we are afflicted by the moral requirements that we so easily adopt. “Profiteer”, “ungrateful”, “impostor”, “petty”, “failed” … express these wounds that the artist takes on her in his creative process, as evidenced by the feminization of titles. The installation in the window puts forward the disappearance of our being behind these judgments.
In the intimacy of the meeting, I felt appeasement by abandoning to the attention of this artist, the dark thoughts that inhabited me, entrusting them to the back and forth of the needle between her hands, or letting them sink into the contemplation of the works exhibited, to the rhythm of the melody haunting the room.
Marie Perrault
Curator