Description

We know that memories are real and that they are not. To the point that we can have memories of events that did not happen or of events that did not happen the way we remember them. Who is lying if our memory does not match the one shown by the photograph? Who do we believe if the reality captured by the camera differs from that of our memory? The real and the fictitious intertwine in our minds to compose our memories. In that double or triple game, we live and exist. False memories are also memories.

The artist takes us on this journey through memory as mediums do. The final station is identity, a recurring theme in his work. It is memories, true and false, that build our identity. We are, essentially, water and memories. But Uxío da Vila does not move here between reality and fiction, between what we remember as real and what we do not, or between how we are and how we wish we were. Instead, he focuses on how we see, on what we see, in this case, and what we remember and will remember. The photos, here, are photos: shorthand revealed from lived reality. But they are also metaphors, not of our eyes, but of our brain, where the memory of what was seen, of what was lived, will be formed and stored under the veil of memory. Like that paper veil that covers some of the photographs in this unique book.

In the contrast of these photographs lie memory and memories. Between the sharp city we see, the veiled city we will remember, and the photographic work on display. The memory of the memory. Between what we see and what it is. Between what we see and what we remember. Between what we remember and what we store. Between what we remember and what we narrate. Between what we narrate and what was.

By David López Canales