To stand in front of the wall on which hang Mar Arza’s installation Nada reiterada (Reiterated Nothingness) is to gain access to a new reading of Carmen Laforet’s novel Nada. More than a reiteration, it is a re-writing of the text. Written in 1944 and awarded the Nadal Prize that same year, the novel is here reduced to its white materiality and to a strange linguistic silence. Unbound and fixed with pins to the wall, the pages of the book perform a subtle game of blank spaces, light and shadows, semantic absences and presences. As in other objects and installations by this artist from Castellón, currently living in Barcelona, Arza takes second-hand books and intervenes them with such basic elements as scissors and scalpels. With an impeccable manual execution and the soul of a poet, she cuts out and removes the words from the book, except for a few that are strategically preserved. Beyond this objectual reading of the novel by Laforet, we are presented with a new semantic interpretation of the text. Like suggestions to be followed, the eye comes across messages in the empty pages on the wall: Enredando en palabras lo más importante (Tangling up what is important in words), Cerrada y bella como un círculo (Closed and beautiful like a circle), we read. And also, Hasta terminar en un susurro (Ending up with a whisper).

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