A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

The title of the exhibition is inspired by the literary work The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luís Borges. In it, the author lists and describes several fantastic creatures created over time through legends, myths, and religions. A Bao a Qu, who Carla Cabanas materializes, is a character of the book, an imaginary being, emotionally sensitive, who only reaches its full form when one travels a path of individual growth, traversing diverse stages to reach spiritual maturity.

“If you want to look out over the loveliest landscape in the world, you must climb to the top of the Tower of Victory in Chitor. There, standing on a circular terrace, one has a sweep of the whole horizon. A winding stairway gives access to this terrace, but only those who do not believe in the legend dare climb up. The tale runs:

On the stairway of the Tower of Victory there has lived since the beginning of time a being sensitive to the many shades of the human soul and known as the A Bao A Qu. It lies dormant, for the most part on the first step, until at the approach of a person some secret life is touched off in it, and deep within the creature an inner light begins to glow. At the same time, its body and almost translucent skin begin to stir. But only when someone starts up the spiralling stairs is the A Bao A Qu brought to consciousness, and then it sticks close to the visitor’s heels, keeping to the outside of the turning steps, where they are most worn by the generations of pilgrims. At each level the creature’s colour becomes more intense, its shape approaches perfection, and the bluish form it gives off is more brilliant. But it achieves its ultimate form only at the topmost step, when the climber is a person who has attained Nirvana and whose acts cast no shadows. Otherwise, the A Bao A Qu hangs back before reaching the top, as if paralysed, its body incomplete, its blue growing paler, and its glow hesitant. The creature suffers when it cannot come to completion, and its moan is a barely audible sound, something like the rustling of silk. Its span of life is brief, since as soon as the traveller climbs down, the A Bao A Qu wheels and tumbles to the first steps, where, worn out and almost shapeless, it waits for the next visitor. People say that its tentacles are visible only when it reaches the middle of the staircase. It is also said that it can see with its whole body and that to the touch it is like the skin of a peach. In the course of centuries, the A Bao A Qu has reached the terrace only once.”

The sculpture A Bao A Qu is composed by photographs of the artist as a child, which act as a metaphor for her growth and are employed as material, rendering them visibility, and transferring them to a public setting. Installed in the laboratory’s centre, it is an allegory of the artist’s journey of personal growth as she aspires to reach the top of the tower and “to look out over the loveliest landscape in the world”. For this process to become conscious, the artist relives its stages, whose steps are winding and filled with scales. The reverse side of the photographs that make up this sculpture is covered in gold leaf, so referring to the Japanese Kintsugi technique that the artist has used in previous works. Kintsugi is a centennial technique for pottery restoration through which the fissures of the broken piece, once pasted, are then covered with gold, thus enhancing these marks, assigning value to the flaws and physical changes caused by time or accidents.

A Bao A Qu questions the role of family photography in the construction of our memories and, consequently, of our identity. In the words of Sigmund Freud:

“Perhaps we ought to content ourselves With asserting that what is past in mental life nap be preserved and is not necessarily destroyed. It is always possible that even in the mind some of what is old is effaced or absorbed — whether in the normal course of things or as an exception — to such an extent that it cannot be restored or revivified by any means; or that preservation in general is dependent on certain favourable conditions. It is possible, but we know nothing about it. We can only hold fast to the fact that it is rather the rule than the exception for the past to be preserved in mental life.” 

The antagonistic relationship within exhibiting in the National Museum of Natural History and Science a being that does not exist, nor existed, while creating an imaginary and immaterial being, contradicts the objective and principle of naturalist collections.

Carla Cabanas challenges herself, as a person and an artist, in her incessant search for new stimuli that take material form in artistic objects.