TRAVEL NOTEBOOK, 2004

Mapi Rivera

The Nua series of images were made in Villanúa, a naked village in the Aragonese Pyrenees.

This experience of integration with the natural environment was gathered in photographic sessions, but, above all, was an experience of approach to the sky and its light. My erect and firm being established communication and communion with the sky. I felt the light reaching my body as if it were the discharge of a continuous and healing thunderbolt. As I permeated myself with light, I somehow raised the sky above.

The storm and the threatening skies required perseverance and tenacity, I was determined not to give up the vigil into which I had become. I became a stele-guide for myself, I saw the light in my own heart, in my belly and in my head. In my head, I also saw a field of stars, the night pierced with lights.

The path that passed through the "naked village" was a reflection of the immense path of stars that was drawn in the sky. Stars that I imagined, that I felt near and far, hidden behind stormy clouds. Stars that rested in my dream, as if I had swallowed them one by one and they were shining scattered inside my body. During the day, walking the trails, wrapped in the field of the "naked village", I would get rid of the evening dress and bare my heart, desire, thought. The transparent bubbles in the sunlight were daytime stars.

I walked the path of light, posing still while being photographed, looking at the sky, feeling how it flooded my eyes and body. Giving myself to the love that ran through my veins like rivers of light. Quiet, immobile and yet light, transparent like clean water, prone to evaporate by the gaze of the sun, melt into bubbles, tears, eyes, in a gaze of light.

With closed and warm lids from the sun, I envisioned the absence of me and the presence of light.