Colourful memories on canvas
Elvira Martos, a Sevilla-based artist, who recently showcased her exhibition at the Gallery ONKAF in Hauz Khas, in a tête-a-tête with The Morning Standard about her recent work that is inspired by the cityscape, her creative style, and more.
How do you describe your artistic style?
For many years, the main focus of my artistic studies was understanding the human condition—they revolve around portraying daily life and the empathetic bond. I travelled and represented different
cultures in the search of that common ground of innate emotions that we all share as human beings.
What is the inspiration behind your recent exhibition Funambulismo?
Funambulismo is a Spanish word that can be translated to ‘tightrope walking’. It refers to how I felt last year after I came to India (Navadwip, West Bengal, and Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh) for a month, and when I went back to my city.
It was a weird period where I felt like I was trying to balance between the person who I was before that journey and the one that I was becoming. And there, almost a year ago, I started this project. Each painting is an instance of an impossible balance between realities, where the material and tangible and the transcendental are unfolding and co-existing simultaneously.
The artworks represent meeting points that—thanks to chanting, the spiritual path, sacred traditions, spiritual masters, prayers, or intimate whispers to the divine—open up gaps and communicate both the realities of the eternal quest towards the absolute.
What nudged you to showcase the culture of a country unknown to you?
It started as a way to clear my mind about my last trip to India—painting helps me understand things better. I wanted to dive into the subtle line that divides/unites two different dimensions (the material and spiritual one).
And our impossibility of fully living in any of them is something that really amazes me. In India, I found all these breakthrough instances, where both realities collapse. It was just natural for me to settle this [place] as the starting point of this spiritual and pictorial study.