There is something impressive about museums preserving fragments of history as old as their number, recounting dark tales of caution or serving sunny day inspirations minus the chaos of boisterous people—thankfully—because there’s more than enough energy in display within the introvert’s playground—Immense and quiet spaces with artwork on high ceilings that mirrors the capacity of liberation and expansion within our mind’s eye, if only we allow ourselves to listen to our thoughts stimulated by labyrinth of images, forms, structure, materials and so on.

That a ‘D’ art student— I’m talking about me—can still appreciate art should mean that it does not require any sort of recognisable talent and counts largely as a matter of taste and opinion; Perhaps many would disagree with this sentiment but there is no stopping a whirling time of good fun to which we keep returning—a playground indeed. Arguably, a subject is admired (or not) in accordance with the nature of our idiosyncratic selves and with that assuring thought, some of us resign ourselves—without complaint—to that of mere onlookers skilled with the basic art of simplification— as with reality— theorising until easily digestible by the mortal human’s bounded cognitive ability even if pale by comparison with the original. Heuristics —a temporary mental shortcut— is like the instrumentalisation of experiences to elucidate new ones which are then categorised into one of the many internal shelves within the head space—like lazy thinking that if not carefully restrained and properly filtered, can turn into dangerous stereotypes feeding searing prejudice; still, their usefulness should not be understated: efficient use of time and mental processes to make decisions or judgements quickly and answering questions like ,”what the actual fuck is this?”

This exhibit over at MACBA, entitled ‘chaque stencil une révolution’ (see https://www.macba.cat/en/art-artists/artists/echakhch-latifa/chaque-stencil-une-revolutionn) is memorable to me because of the contradistinction of simplicity conveying many fantastical and successive meanings. Walls were lined with identically-cut carbon paper from floor to ceiling, differentiated only by colour bleeding achieved by the unmethodical use of a dissolving agent. The result: a trickling down effect— pooling in some areas and leaving others untouched—and gorgeous hues of blue as profoundly imperceptible as the midnight sky or a luminous azure one at noon; The colours, however, were not the point at least, not as important as the process of achieving it and the meaning behind it.

The mental shortcuts used in making sense of this work were akin to the bridging of experiences—read, heard, watched, learnt about etc— in the form of facts, principles or assumptions. Carbon paper was used in the 60s to carry and transmit powerful messages from where the storm of protest or revolution is seeded; thus, whilst smack in the middle of the artwork, awed by size, creativity and what not, I was reminded by how alike and different humans are, if seen in light of mass movement participation—purposeful—just like the individual pieces of paper glued to the wall—regardless of whether it was the Artist’s intention or not. Spreading awareness of an issue is but one important step whilst the “trickling down effect” of the colour bleed appeared like the significant effects of passing the message along: by speaking of it, debating, writing, convincing others of the same with different intensity and success rates and at the same time, be reminded of how easy it is for any message to get lost, bungled up or erased.

This task of adding members to the band is made easier through the use of social media as every issue is given the brightest spotlight and a microphone, recruiting scores of roadies and fans to the cause whose strength in numbers are previously unseen coming from far and wide. Solidarity with opinions nurtures confidence, validate feelings, solidifies beliefs and emboldening us into action as the risk to us personally is dispersed thus minimised—participation need not guarantee anything concrete before we are spurred into action, no matter how small, as long as we remember the overall picture and the intricate web that it is or simply enjoy the fun.

what it does not say is as important as what it does say —According to the law of closure, we perceive a circle even if parts of it are missing by doing some kind of patchwork in our minds and filling it with things we already know—that in itself is not problematic as long as we remember that the fillers and the overall picture it forms inside our heads, do not necessarily represent truth because by treating each and every wholly independent subject as though they are connected, we are adopting and applying fiction.

Visual metaphors, more so when unaccompanied by annotation, can spur many interpretations branching off from one single trunk, blooming banality into the extraordinary, setting loose parallelism via association or analogy, shaping allegories or simply shining a light on zeitgeist or everything else beneath the stars, in a way that using only words cannot. There is something extremely powerful about this work —it keeps the wheels turning and with each turn the end result is clearer-like a moving picture; I suppose the more I make of it, the more valuable it becomes like sentimental value.