Sea of Silence
Sea of Silence is a project rooted in the artist’s deep desire of immersing herself in the journeys of migrant women who travel across deserts and seas in pursuit of the dream of a change. The project itself is a journey heading towards a stage piece of which the artist still knows little as it is precisely the journey that is the focus here.
It is a project that escapes the victimising logics of an experience that we know to be dramatic. Instead, its focus lies in the power of the female bodies that face the journey, willing to deal with whatever is in their way, activating survival strategies because the desire and need for the change drives them to embark on this risky adventure.
The research strategies that Tamara Cubas is currently putting into practice for the Sea of Silence consist of: encounters with migrant women in the places of their arrival, (Bodily Crossing), an Installation where the affectations of the encounterswith the migrant women are being processed in the artist's body (Sculpting the Silence) and a work-object composed of a travel book and a doll manufactured by communities of women from different corners of the universe. The dolls cross the world in a specially designed box, they reach multiple homes and affect those who temporarily receive them (Monnula).
At the centre of a deep and unutterable paradox, a hole opens up – the silence will live there forever. The silence of what could not be foreseen, the silence of bankruptcy, the silence of the uprooting and the silence of the pieces that the road tore away from me. I – a woman, a migrant, a loner, a mother, a daughter, a sister. I – a woman, driven to move by a greater force, by the desire for something better, by the need for more oxygen, the need to flee, to get there, to find a less hostile home, moved by the need to become completely disheartened and to rebuild myself from the remains. Nothing has a name; everything is defined. Nothing is known; everything is reconstructed. When I fled in the early hours of the morning, my mother gave me a bag of salt: “Always keep it with you, hidden under your clothes. It will protect you and keep away the evil spirits. You can also use it to preserve some food, it can save your life.”
The artists will open to the audience her different creative processes including a Q&A after her presentation.
Tamara Cubas lives and works in her home country Uruguay. She received a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from the National School of Fine Arts Institute at the University of the Republic of Uruguay. She holds a master’s degree in Art and Technology from the School of Arts in Utrecht, where she became an EMMA Award winner – Image & Technology. Tamara Cubas studied contemporary dance at the Contradanza School in Montevideo.
In her stage practices, Cubas has developed two lines of research – one that delves into the performative body in a constant search for the autonomy of the body based on her own concepts such as the Aesthetics of Precarity. In this line, she investigates the power of Latin American bodies endowed with memories, history and particular experiences and their constant search for decolonization (Cannibal Series 2019/ Anthropophagic Trilogy 2017/ Puto Gallo Conquistador 2016).
The second line refers to the Other, where she develops projects with non-artistic populations and communities. In this path the recurring themes are history, the homeland, power, the political, interpersonal relationships, heterogeneity, and dissent. (Lost Acts of Love 2011/Multitude 2014/ La Brisa 2016/ and the current projects Trilogy of Time and Sea of Silence). She is interested in and explores the personal story of hers and others as a strategy that contrasts and resists the Official story. The projects are developed in collaboration with dramaturgs such as Gabriel Calderón and other writers.
Credits
A creative research and development held between Kunstencentrum Vooruit and KVS in Belgium and in Spain at Cádiz Iberoamerican Arts Festival (FIT).