The flight of the dragonfly over a garden of salt flowers, Jesús Briceño. BOOM! Art Community
Dragonflies, delicate and ancient creatures, are water hoppers. Migrants by nature, with intense and short lives, they travel great distances, crossing skies and worlds in search of refuge and home. Attached to the water, they fragilely traverse the maps, tracing paths of resilience. Wandering like dragonflies, so are the women and men, the girls and boys, who set out across the waters and trace the path in search of a new life.
The journey begins in Venezuela, off the coast of Güiria, in the east of the country and a few kilometres from Trinidad and Tobago, a furtive destination. In recent years, Venezuelans have faced a massive migratory movement unprecedented in the region, a product of the acute and growing generalised crisis unfolding in the country. Desperate for a better life, many have decided to risk their lives on one of the most dangerous routes out of the country: the sea crossing around the Gulf of Paria. Hundreds disappear in the attempt. They perish in a garden of salt flowers.
Jesús Briceño is a visual artist who explores the image through different media, beyond digital and paper printing. In his research, he experiments with different formats and techniques, with the aim of breaking the traditional schemes of photography. His work focuses on overcoming two-dimensionality, giving the Flowers of Salt montage an unconventional three-dimensional sense, which connects the installation with a deep symbolism. In Punto de Fuga, Briceño incorporates a sound component that seeks to further immerse the viewer in the context, generating complete images that transcend traditional ways of perceiving photography.
On this other side of the world, the journey ends. Spain is the final destination for thousands fleeing a life full of shadows. Far from home, these stories have managed to bear witness to stormy paths, but with glimmers of hope. Connected by sea and land, the migrants look up to the same sky that welcomes them. Hundreds survive. They trace the flight of the dragonfly.
During the Boom Art Community Transatlantic Residency in Madrid, Jesús Briceño has opted for polaroid photography. This instant, tactile, light and easy to manipulate and transport technique has been perfectly integrated into his creative process, allowing him to play with the images by manipulating, superimposing, breaking, painting and writing on them. The idea of creating unique and irreproducible pieces is fascinating to him, as are the stories he has captured during his stay. In The Flight of the Dragonfly, a key element of his contextualisation is an old typewriter, with which he intervenes in the images. The act of printing words with force becomes an intimate and performative gesture, essential to the record, which reinforces its archival aesthetic, a crucial aspect of the artist’s entire creative process.
Jesús outlines the painful and resilient journey of forced migration, through anonymous portraits of those who have survived and those whose lives were tragically interrupted by the journey, sometimes becoming their tomb, sometimes a new path. ‘El vuelo de la libélula sobre un jardín de Flores de Sal’ explores the invisible paths of the Mediterranean Sea, its illegal transport routes and one of the largest cemeteries in the world, and of the Atlantic Ocean, on the Venezuelan borders, spaces of forced departure and scenes of shipwrecks such as that of the boat “Mi Recuerdo” which, in 2020, left 33 dead and 18 missing off the coast of Güiria.
Through a visual and sound record, Jesús captures the faces of the survivors, worn out by the struggle but still bearing a glimmer of life in their eyes, and confronts them with a symbolic garden of those who did not manage to complete their journey. Throughout their journey, the sea is both witness and executioner, the place where the lifeless bodies rest in silence, like delicate flowers of salt that form on its surface, a powerful metaphor that pays homage to the victims.
It is a journey that represents the flight of the exodus and the final rest of the travellers. Like dragonflies, migrants survive on the move, always in search of a safe haven. They are ethereal creatures, attracted by water, reflecting the endless cycle of life and death.
LUCÍA JIMENEZ PEROZO.
GUEST CURATOR
