Extract from RUTH
EXTRACT FROM RUTH by Guillem Viladot (tr. P. Louise Johnson)
PRELUDE
I often attend exhibitions at the Espai Guinovart. They’re always interesting, although of course the quality can be variable and some artists are more original than others.
That Sunday I was looking forward with relish to the Joan Hernández Pijuan opening. The master’s works exude a lyrical, earthy, very human quality, but we need to keep in mind his words of caution: ‘These papers and canvases may appear finished in the workshop, but until they emerge into public view, there’ll always be a risk that I change something, because their very presence makes me doubt myself, and new ideas begin to prick at me. When they’re exhibited, they take on this ‘other’ reality as their context changes, and they leave behind the studio where they’ve been created and in some way conditioned. They cease being objects for my personal use, and in the neutral exhibition space, open to other gazes, they assume their own reality. They become objects for communal reflection. Exhibition is the culmination of their purpose.’
There was a notable presence of writers and artistic folk who had come to celebrate with our friend Joan Hernández Pijuan at the Espai Guinovart; pretty much all of us were there. After the formal opening ceremony, we were served the now traditional aperitif of cava and flatbreads.
Amid the melee of guests, I caught sight of a couple about my age accompanied by a young woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty. As they made their way towards me, I realised it was Ivars the painter, and his wife. We hadn’t met for years and greeted each other warmly.
‘Do you know our daughter?’ he asked pointedly.
‘I’m not sure I’ve had the pleasure.’
‘When you met her, she was our son…’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘She used to be Raül, or still is, but she wants to be Ruth, which is why she’s dressed as a female. We’re in a process of transition.’
I must have looked utterly confused because my friend Ivars straightaway clarified, ‘She wants to change sex and name.’
Ivars’ wife started crying as I had to stop myself blurting out, ‘What, just like that?’
‘It’s been really difficult, you know, we’re struggling to cope.’
Meanwhile, Ruth, formerly Raül, was smiling at me. Her father seemed nervous. Once I’d recovered my composure, I observed the girl in front of me carefully. She was extremely pretty, bright eyes, a perfect oval face, shapely lips and long mahogany-tinted hair. She was slim, and her fingers were long and delicate. What most aroused my curiosity was her skin, and her face in particular. I was so taken by it that in a move most unlike me, I asked her:
‘Do you mind?’ And without waiting for an answer, I stroked her cheek with my right hand.
‘Incredible.’
My friend Ivars managed a smile, while his wife still whimpered. With an easy familiarity, Ruth asked me to show her around the Espai Guinovart. This is something I love doing, and I always begin with an anecdote to set my audience at ease.
‘Well, Ruth, a long time ago this was a Mercedarian convent. The space now dedicated to Josep Guinovart’s work would have been the cloister. The lower floor was occupied by a range of municipal offices, and the first floor hosted the local primary school. When I was a child I came here every day for lessons. As you can imagine, this place is close to my heart. I was happy here because I had a great teacher, mestre Agustí Faixa, who was a devil for insisting we read, and had us make chessboards and chess pieces out of cane. The convent was demolished in 1936, and in 1948 the General Directorate for Devastated Regions built a market here, and the Espai Guinovart is now housed within that structure.’
As we made our way around, Ruth and I didn’t stop talking. I’m not sure she was always attentive, but I owed her the full tour.
‘Every piece exhibited here speaks to the strength of the artist’s roots in this landscape. Although he wasn’t born locally, his mother was from Agramunt. Guino lived here around 1938, and after the war he used to come back every summer to live the life of a peasant, in a hut, with a small holding.
‘You love this land too, don’t you?’
‘Perhaps that’s why Guino’s work means so much to me.’
I explained to Ruth that the space is divided into three main sectors or elements: Seasons, Hut, and Threshing Floor. Around them, the myth is completed by wheat, straw, fire, and a firmament of stars, the aesthetic dimension that transcends reality. We made our way to the Threshing Floor.
‘Look, how marvellous! The threshing floor sublimely interpreted as the miraculous centre of peasant life and tradition: the domestic, social and economic nucleus. The peasant is the incarnation of the land-become-symbol, the stubbornness of a constant, dark struggle against adverse forces of nature. The artist has given shape to the almost mystical value of the peasant by elevating it above simple anecdote.’
Ruth came close and looked at me with delighted surprise.
‘I want to be able to love as you love: to love people, the land, reality, dreams… my body, and others’ bodies. Who am I, my friend? What sense of oneness do you have, all of you who have so much love? Where does your satisfaction with life come from? My friend, you haven’t had to make a choice, you’ve just lived the life that you’ve been given, like a destiny that someone has picked out for you and guides you. I, on the other hand, have to choose.’
There’s nothing I could do to stop my eyes from tearing up, but I pretended not to notice.
‘Thanks to Guinovart, this rebellious landscape has been projected worldwide as an embassy of everything else that our country is: the humble heroism of warm colours and uninhabited immenseness, converted by the genius of the artist into cradle and language of solidarity, fraternal embers of hope.’
Ruth grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. And as though mimicking the age-old rhythm of the field roller, we walked again and again around the edge of the Threshing Floor. As she gazed up, Ruth implored: ‘I want to rise up above this starry constellation, and unleash a cascade of love on you all.’ Falling silent, she then said: ‘What love, though, if I still don’t love myself…?’ She gave me a hug and whispered into my ear: ‘I hate my mother…’
The Ivars family said goodbye. Ruth followed, saying: ‘I’ll write to you.’
RUTH will be published on the 15th of September. More information HERE.
