INHABITING THE DISCOMFORT

Rumi wrote: ”The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Not as if the problem was the end point but the start to grow, learn and transition. And I feel like it's as simple as that, that's where what I do goes through me.

Almost all the series of work that I did has to do with letting that light in to give clarity to my own ailments, or shortcomings. And no matter how big or small these wounds are, they always lead to my own projects, this series being a reflection of what bothers me about myself or from outside.

My work in this series is born from a discomfort: the difficulty of inhabiting the present. My attention usually wanders to other times, another planet. However, it is precisely that vulnerability that forces me to cling to the details, to find an anchor in them. The idea comes from seeing those details in the midst of chaos, from one day going out disconnected to my music, from demanding myself to be present through sounds, sensations, smells. Just being present.

In this series of ceramic plates I continue with my previous work that questions what we consume consumes us, but this time from the experience of walking through a new city, Barcelona, ​​and learning to see it from the here and now.

My process begins on the street. Living in the present constantly connected to the environment is uncomfortable, exhausting. Disconnected, tired from the demand of being present, until a detail—a centuries-old tile, a commemorative plaque, an eroded texture—stops me moving. Wherever I walk I find stories that no one tells, symbols that we repeat without knowing why, brands that we inhabit without looking at them. And in that minimal gesture of leaning forward to trace a floor with clay, I agree to inhabit the discomfort: expose myself, get dirty, make my presence visible in the public space and cross that border from the passive to the active.

These pieces are plates traced directly from the city's floor (not all of them). It took me a couple of months to warm up to the vulnerability of being seen, of recording those surfaces in public, of exposing myself. And years to develop that bridge between what I always do and what I want to do, where I project my work with what I love.

I add images that I photograph, edit and work with screen printing and transfers. Each plate functions as a bridge between past and present: what was stepped on, eroded and designed to solve everyday problems—mud in the streets, traffic, the passage of time—becomes a reading surface, a support for new narratives, new reflections.

The everyday becomes a symbol. The ornamental reveals its functional origin. The beautiful exhibits its history of wear, destruction and survival. The city appears as a system of layers: what we believe to be stable changes; what we ignore persists; What we discard keeps the memory of those who inhabited this space before us.

The process is slow, fragmented, almost ritual: investigate, walk, observe, trace, develop, print, burn, glaze. All of this occurs between lapses of fleeting attention, as if the work itself accompanied my need to return to the detail again and again so as not to get lost. And I trust that my intuition is going to tell me what image, what color, randomness speaks to me and I follow. The plates thus become a record of time: a trencadís clock where each crack holds a moment, a decision, a perception.The balconies a window to observe what happens in that temporal register.

I wonder what we put on our plate: not just food, but ideas, stories, fears, images, habits. What we ingest without realizing it. What we consume from the past to build our present is what resonates most with me when I work like this. This series seeks to open that question and stop – even for a second – the vertigo of time. Inhabit the discomfort to be able to see. See to be able to connect. And connect to enjoy. As Rumi said, to let a little light in through the wounds that pass through us.