Leaving Behind

Leaving Behind.

Etching, Chine-Collé.

30cm30cm.

2012.

Do you know the feeling you get after travelling by airplane through multiple time zones, when you've been on one side of the world in the morning and you arrive on the other side in the evening? It always feels to me as if part of myself, or part of my soul has stayed behind and needs a little longer than the physical body to come along. In my most recent work I'm exploring different experiences about farewell, of holding on and letting go, of separations and longing, but also of new beginnings. In Leaving Behind I tried to portray the sense of leaving parts of myself behind in all the places where I've lived (Paraguay, Germany, Canada). To me that seems similar to the feeling I described earlier. Sometimes it appears that part of me is still there, in a place where I have spent part of my life, where I've shared experiences with others, and where I connected with a place, its vegetation, its animals, its climate. Part of myself remains in a place, but fades into the past as I go on. In a way I always reach out for that part of me that lives elsewhere and my mind is always in multiple places throughout the day, but I also know that the past remains in the past. I think the gesture of the figure of the present me in the piece is a little ambiguous; it could be either a plea to the other me to stay or a release of her into the past.

I have a few new pieces coming up in this series. The previous piece - Dreaming of a Garden - also connects with the theme of farewell in that it is a dream of new beginnings.