Palabras son Piedras is an installation by Claudia Kaatziza Cortínez in collaboration with Mia Maurer Cortínez. A series of translucent images are suspended between layers of dyed silk, perforated with fragments of a poem, la palabra es la huella de una isla.
The photographs, by Claudia, were taken in a small town in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, that was flooded for decades and due to recent droughts the receded water has left the remains of the town visible, bleached from salt and submerged in sand.
The text (in Spanish), by Mia, navigates these landscapes through staccato language that comes together in layers, experimenting with sounds and proposing that words (palabras) and stones (piedras) are interchangeable. The text and images build upon each other in overlays of texture, exploring structures of language, memory, and a multiplicity of forms (geological, architectural and semantic) that pause time between construction and decay.
As light illuminates the fabric it creates a shadowplay, projecting perforated words onto the images and walls behind them. In Palabras son Piedras, what predominates is the sounds and marks left by water, sun, the tongue and breath.
This work was recently exhibited at Westbeth Gallery in NYC and Supply Projects In Bangor, PA.
