achievement:
DULCE MATEU
Volatility
Within the scope of the WOMEN AND METAMORPHOSES project, a series of body and art workshops are being held for women from different backgrounds. During the workshop, we make four drawings, always without looking at the paper and focusing on what was being drawn: the first, of an object or landscape seen in that present moment. The second, from a fragment of this image. The third, invisible – we draw with the body in space. The fourth, a synthesis of the sensory experiences that had been passed through. In the latter, I asked for a word (text) to be associated with the image. The focus of these workshops is not the finished product of creative actions, but precisely what can emerge from the destabilization of patterns of perception and habits rooted in the body. The body keeps silent stories. Exploring its cracks can be a way to bring specific and hidden truths closer together.
Dulce Matheus, “Volatility”. Graphite on bond paper. Drawing improvisation performed at the body and art workshop, www.mulheresemetamroses.org, held on July 1, 2021
Volatility, in its common sense, indicates something that flies, aerial, foggy. This term points to constant change, something that is neither firm nor permanent. In chemistry and physics volatility is a quantity that measures the ease with which a substance changes from a liquid to a gaseous state.
We started the workshop with a breathing exercise, in which I asked participants to breathe by imagining that a stream of water goes up and down through their bodies, flowing out of the body through the top of their heads and feet. Dulce's design brings this fluidity, adding its changes of state to the course of the water.
As soon as I opened the room, Dulce, who is 76, asked if she was the only “elderly woman” in the workshop. I replied that the workshop is for women regardless of age. And after all, what does the age of a certain person mean? It points out the historical context (time and worldviews of that time) in which a person was born, points out the changes in this context that a person has gone through to the present day, points out the transformations that the body-mind undergoes throughout life and of time and all the experience and knowledge that can emerge from this process.
Dulce's first drawing was shy, more restrained, as perhaps she felt about being the “only old woman” in the group. As the line entered your body with the movement exercises, the lines became stronger and more defined. Life is volatile. A constant change of states. The fluidity and security of his latest drawing point to the understanding and acceptance of this series of metamorphoses