Rosa Lasaosa

The latest conceptual work fro1n Barcelona artist Rosa Lasaosa contemplates that most ancient of mysteries, the cycles of a woman's life and their intrinsic connection to the cosmos. In a powerful, yet meditative, mixed 1nedia installation, Ode to Woman is an ode to the Goddess within all women, and the heroic journey she must undertake to reach her own true nature.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell, author of' 'The hero With A Thousand Faces', claimed that women need not make this journey. "In the whole mythological tradition, wo1nan is already THERE. She is the place we want to reach."

Rosa Lasaosa clearly disagrees. She has not abandoned the quest for fulfillment, and her heroine's odyssey, mapped out in the dark, painfully sharp paths of LAVA at our feet, is not an easy one. The molten core of Mother Earth, once spewed out in the throes of spawning new life, is now cool to the touch, splattered with rusted iron oxide, as if her blood had fallen from the night sky and dried there on the jagged stones, under the cold pure light of a month of moons, an unbroken cycle, unfathomable to the uninitiated…

Upon this bed of lava lie, on the one side, SEVEN PLATTERS of pale white clay. Like serene ponds finding perfection in symmetry, smoothness and stillness, they seem a reflection and containment of the moons above. The platters, designed as primitive 'comales' laboriously formed from the earth, are symbols of plenty, but also of service, of sacrifice. They have been shadowed with delicate strands of female ~air, consu1ned by the fire, now part of their very essence. On each of these 'fallen' moons has been dropped, as if from a passing night bird fleeing her burning nest, the gift of a blackened branch. These broken twigs, burnt offerings, appear to be part of another whole, drawing our eye away toward the opposite side, where we perceive their source: SEVEN STAFFS, long, frail looking branches offla1ne-blackened willow, emerging from the once-molten cavities of SEVEN VESSELS of burnished clay. Created in fire by woman, herself a charged vessel of power. Caring, nurturing, accepting, she heals all but her own elusive spirit.

The slender branches, in bun1ing, have given up parts of themselves, which fall upon the sacrificial platters. Yet the sacred willows, reaching out from their spirit vessels, still resonate, and beckon us to follow. Where must we go?

The path leads down and further down. Deep within ourselves. We become aware of a feeling of spiritual aridity, an urgent yearning to reconnect with the feminine. Thus we initiate a descent to the Goddess. There is no sense of time in this underworld. We cannot rush our stay. Our reasons for coming here differ, be it a broken heart, a life-threatening illness, the loss of a loved one to the final mystery. We each must pass alone through those seven gates, which test our spirit and resolve. We are dismembered, and feel despair of becoming whole again. Eventually we heal, drawing an inner strength to finally integrate both our masculine and feminine sides. We reclaim the meaning of our lives.

The artist knows there are no short cuts to this sacred place. Her 'paper' moons are hand-pressed from Mexican birch wood, floating on rings of its own bark. Her platters and pots have the appearance of prehistoric artifacts, and are, in fact, conceived and created by the most primitive and time-consuming of means. She molds fresh young clay, rolls it into ropes, painstakingly layers, then smoothes and polishes the raw clay with river stones. Perhaps a metaphor for the birth itself of woman, who has no need for the potter's wheel.

The artist's materials are organic, therefore ageless: Stone, clay, wood bark and willow branch, transformed by the elements of fire, water, earth, the air itself. Standing in this calm, Zen-like garden of pale moons, pale wombs and dark ancient stone, we receive strong, yet gentle messages. A platter, cracked, has been meticulously stitched with white twine, conjuring up an image of a body corseted, yet open to interpretation. Perhaps a broken spirit, now repaired. A pot, tom in the pain of birth, is sewn back together in the manner of lost Native American arts, as if it were made of animal skins, its edges · contained, the twine trailing back, seeking connection to the others. But these vessels, which appear on first examination to be fragile, are deceiving in their frailty. One touches their inner walls, and finds a strength, present but unseen.

We pass with measured footsteps through this alien yet familiar landscape, and hear the voice of the goddess: singing, sighing, laughing and crying in the birth of ecstasy, the ecstatic pain of birth. The music reflects the artist's own Iberian history, the 'influences which inspired and molded her : The mountains of the Pyrenees that gave birth to her, the love poems of the great' Chilean writer Pablo Neruda, the haunting lyrics of Sensi Falan, songs of happiness, hope and silence, which combine the classic and contemporary to celebrate the eternal passion… from the women of Spain to the women of the world.

Rosa Lasaosa speaks to all of us. Emanating from her work is a sense ·of the divine awakened. No longer are we enclosed in a deep gray room of harsh stone and fragile floating forms: The space expands to encompass the universe. These primitive ceramic platters, in offering themselves, are transformed into planets around which the moons above endlessly revolve and revolve. The polished opalescent pots, directed toward that moon-filled sky, give birth to a dawning self-realization: that within each of us is the primeval spirit of the Goddess; we are indeed one with the mistress of the tide that runs in our blood. The lyrical, shamanistic voices, the luminous serenity of our surroundings, open our souls to all possibilities, elicit in us a response to the divine, immortal energy that occurs within and between all women., a profound acknowledgment of female power.

In a previous exhibition, shown in America at the Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island, Rosa Lasaosa created the widely acclaimed ODE TO EARTH, conceived as a global concept that unified the basic and simple elements of life. Against the mesmerizing whisper of threshing grain, a soft carpeting of golden wheat upon which sit twelve lustrous ceramic 'boulders', signifying grain silos, the seasonal growth cycles, .the months of fallowness, and renewal. A recurring theme: The need for balance between famine and over abundance... Following in her own footsteps, unnatural progression, she now fearlessly explores, with equal wonder and candor, the cycles of a woman, her search for balance, fruition, and the waiting Goddess within.

¨ODA A LA MUJER¨

Instalación de técnica mixta, materiales naturales, madera, papel barro,lava
y cante.

Una Oda, un canto a la mujer en el espacio de un campo de lava dividido por un
pasillo. A un lado descansan, surgen unas piezas, vasijas de barro blanco,
hechas a mano sin torno, bruñidas por piedra de río, vientres de mujer.

De su cavidad se elevan varas quemadas por el fuego de la lava que encierra en
sus entrañas. Como espíritus elevados en la noche se levantan hasta que sus
puntas caen en unos comales, también de barro blanco, que flotan sobre la lava
negra del espacio opuesto.

Comales, ofrendas, entrega de mujer, marcados, quemados por el fuego de sus
cabellos.

De las paredes, del espacio cerrado como útero, cuelgan 7 cuadros, grabados de
técnica mixta, en los que flotan, el ciclo, 28 lunas que han capturado el
espíritu de
 mujer.

Este silencio callado, tranquilidad como abrigo cálido uterino, lo rompe la
voz, canto hondo de mujer.

R.L.