Mar Arza: “Hasta terminar en un susurro” Discover the works in the new exhibition of the Collection
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).