The Lucid Room
Text by María García Yelo:
"Kemê or the fragility of an oak tree."The fragility of an oak. The softness of a wire. The serenity of a fire. These and other feelings astonish you observing the synesthetic space that is The Lucid Room.
Kemê sees herself and the objects through a white mirror. A padded one. And collects into her pictures and videos the slow transformation of a living being, perishable, in an inert piece, like a beautiful game that is at the same time disturbing.
White, ocher and red are almost the only colours of this mysterious universe, inhabited by a multitude of characters and elements, all different and all intimate and subtly related.
Somewhere an irritating phone sounds or the expectant ticking of a clock; by listening to them we become aware that time passes, it is measured, but here life takes place very slowly.
The lucid room is in a gap, and there, everything has reached an unusual balance: the mourner woman with an animal face, the artifice of the hair, the volubility of the postures, the organic and unexpected shapes, the bones, blood, tissues, fruits… You can see through the images, but what happens there almost seems that could also be touched, smelled or savoured. The delicate branch of a flowering almond tree, fossilised, turns at the sound of a song, dumb and infinite. And you do not need anything else.
Artist's note
The Lucid Room emerged from my relationship with dreams, daydreaming and the subconscious, and from a curiosity about how becoming more aware of these processes might transform my relationship with conscious reality.
Returning systematically to the same white studio room, I created a temporary parallel space, a staged reflection of my thoughts, dreams and unconscious processes.
The room exists in multiple realms simultaneously. Like an anchor in lucid dreaming, it is a bridge between these realms, a place to observe, inhabit and transform them. Like a camera lucida, which allows a subject and its representation to be perceived simultaneously, the room becomes a space where inner experiences, objects and their photographic representations overlap, coexist and transform one another.
Through photography, performance and installation, I explored symbols and their personal resonances, moving between what is imagined, experienced and perceived as real.
Through this process of re-creation, my subconscious sometimes speaks more lucidly about reality than the words my consciousness has learned.
