Blanca d´Anjou inspires Lourdes Fisa
Lourdes Fisa signs a permanent installation at Casa de Cultura Blanca d’Anjou, in Hospitalet d l’Infant (Tarragona)
susana paz 08.12.2017 | 23:00
It is called Transparencies and it can be seen in the hall of Casa de Cultura Blanca d’Anjou in Hospitalet de l’Infant, Tarragona. It is an artwork composed of four compositions and specifically created to stay in this newly inaugurated space. Fisa explains that the Queen Blanche d’Anjou has been the “inspiration” for her work, with which she wants to “honor from my view as a woman and artist” the feminine figure that laid the foundations so as her son, Pere d’Arago i d’Anjou, could found the town of Hospitalet de l’Infant.
At the beginning of the year, during the construction process of the building, the architectural studio Carreras Ollé contacted Fisa asking her to make a proposal to “dress up” the hall of the to be Casa de Cultura. She was mulling over the concepts “harmony and warmth”. She visited the building and its surroundings and, once she knew the name the building was going to be given – Blanca d’Anjou, she plunged in the history of the town: “I was looking for its origins. I needed to make the history and the space my own.” Books such as Les nostres arrels. Documents de la Baronia d’entença: Vandellòs, Coll de Balaguer i l’Hospitalet de l’Infant, by Manuel Romero and Maria Teresa Palet helped Fisa to focus the image she wanted to project – the traces of history, the passage of time – upon documents such as the Queen’s last will and testament or the parchment charter of the hospital of Coll de Balaguer. How? Depicting Blanche d’Anjou through calligraphy.
Fisa was looking for contrast in materials when creating her compositions. On the one hand, glass fiber, opaque, which she has been investigating over the years, and which symbolizes the past. On the other hand, glass panes, transparent, which the artist had been working with in her 2013 exhibition “Melodies de llum/Light Melodies”, in Casa Lluvià in Manresa, and which represents the present. The hall of Casa de Cultura Blanca d’Anjou is 13 meters long and 3 meters wide, and is a double-height space. Fisa’s contribution can be appreciated from both the ground floor and the first floor of a building that hosts local media, the Cultural center for organizations and the Cultural center for young people.
Fisa has altered the appearance of the two compositions in glass fiber so that they seem parchment, “inspired by real documents of that time.” They measure 280 x 92 cm and are called Parchment. Document 1 and Parchment. Document 2. They hang from the ceiling and are suspended above the room. The other two compositions are panes of glass engraved with acid and painted with vitrified glaze. This work was carried out in Vidrera del Cardoner. Blanche, mother of town (239 x 120 cm) and Blanche, mysteries of the Queen (250 x 130 cm) are sited in the big openings on the sides of the hall. The reflecting glass “transmutes together with the shades of light”, says Fisa. It is seen differently whenever one looks at it, a key point for an artist who considers that artworks must seem to be alive.