DW: Could you talk about your series "Obsequio" where you have embroidered on newsprint lining of cardboard boxes that have been folded out?
AG: The title of the exhibition is "Parallel Discourse" and in this work I am creating a parallel identity. I have created this through different coloured threads that I have sewn over the words. The idea is like a gift which I give you. It is in a closed box. You open it. But the information is obscured by my embroidery which covers the message. So my intervention gives another message to you. It is a display of my art – it changes the discourse of the words and it changes the form of the art.
DW: What about the many photographic works which you have also embroidered? In particular "Pasaje"/ "Passage" where you introduce a silver thread that creates a spider's web.
AG: I always use a portrait of myself in these works, and the embroidery made with my hand contrasts with and disrupts the smooth technology of the digital print. The threads I introduce in this photograph represent a meditation on the theme of life and death. It is a fundamental theme in the history of art. I use thread like a symbolic language. The thread in the hair is silver, just like what happens to our hair when we age. The image expresses the idea is life is passing on.
DW: Can you say a few words about another photographic work entitled "Vasos Comunicantes" / "Communicating Glasses"?
AG: As the title indicates, this is a work about communication. And it is about communication between opposites, signified by the different colours of the thread used – blue and red. The threads cross the photographs but in a balanced way. It is not a confrontational image, but an attempt to get a balance between the two points of view.
Aimée García is an established artist on the Cuban art scene having been involved in the 11th and 12th editions of the Havana Biennale. She will represent Cuba this year at the 57th Venice Biennale: Viva Arte Viva.
Parallel Discourse the exhibition is on until 30 April 2017.
Full details of the exhibition here
Venue: The Gallery at Foyles, Level 5, 107 Charing Cross Road, london. 9.30am-8pm.
Cuba 50 