Judging by the colors, textures, humidity and viscosity of Search of the unknown place, which the Argentine artist Afrodita exhibits with Aura, we could think that there is something infernal about that imagined space. It is not, however, a dantesque image of hell, it does not resemble a place of torture.
The structures that seem to be made of skin, or something like skin, organic at any rate; the others, which are barely grids — little networks that may be beneath other lingual, cartilaginous shapes, like a skeleton and/or nerve — look comfortable. We could sit, recline or even lay down on them, right? But there is something else in this space: the black viscosity. It is the toughest matter to describe, it is somewhere between the dark background, the water or liquid substance upon which everything rises, the organic and reticular structures. This viscosity, which seems to take everything over in a symbiotic, tentacular and manyfold way… looking like petroleum, in spite of being shinier than it and acquiring a certain liquid solidity the former never could, and whose texture, meaning the idea we could get of its feeling to the touch, is impossible to imagine, would it be liquid, sticky, astringent… or rather solid and smooth? This dark organism — whose heart seems to be located in the upper right corner of the frame– is, in the end, what may suggest that this place is a possible hell; because the place, marvelously, is fictitious, it is the work of nature and the landscape transformed by imagination… and from that viscosity, a red chemical-like light emerges, circulating through different areas of oneness which, along with the white light coming from we know not where, creates an atmosphere: it allows us to see, to perceive.
At the end of the 18th century, the Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova — who was captivated by the archetype of Aphrodite, among others– would write in his memoir, entitled Histoire de ma vie (1792), regarding what may lay beyond death, the following: “Therefore, as I cannot, from my own information, have a perfect certainty of my being immortal until the dissolution of my body has actually taken place, people must kindly bear with me, if I am in no hurry to obtain that certain knowledge, for, in my estimation, a knowledge to be gained at the cost of life is a rather expensive piece of information”. The unknown, then, as a quest for knowledge belongs, even to this day, to imagination, being rather expensive is where its worth stems from.
Search of the unknown place is not dantesque, because, in Afrodita’s own words, it is about “a quite innocent hell, rather like a refuge, a place to escape (…) it is a place that appears when you got lost”. It is likely that Casanova, in his journeying and his fleeing — from his lovers, his enemies and the Inquisition — would have liked to find a place like that. But it was not the case. I will point out, in order to wrap this up, one more thing: “an innocent inferno” implies that there is no guilt, which is Christian, guilt has no rule in this place. What rules, instead, is being adrift, being lost as a condition for this place to become manifest. If there is something of a guiltless hell in this place, when thinking about Hades, the other deity that governs the unknown, and which could be, from a certain point of view, the most patient and hospitable of gods, is not a reference fit for Search of the unknown place, because in Hades, just as in hell, the souls are not at ease.
After all, this is a place conceived by the artist Afrodita, whose homonymous deity at some point sent the soul, Psyche, to Hades in order to retrieve one of Persephone’s secret cosmetics. She asked that of her as one last task before recovering Love. She asked for that cream because she was feeling old and needed that magical substance, but the fair and mortal Soul could never open the container holding such a secret. Every prohibition awakens curiosity: the seed of the quest. That is why, if this is any sort of hell, it resembles those the heart falls into after la petite mort.
Finir
