The beauty that springs from an open padlock

– Francisco Salado Seat

The delicacy of a small branch that seems fragile but, against all odds, breaks through and blooms in the gap of an open padlock is an exquisite metaphor for narrating the physical and emotional journey of those who have left a homeland that oppressed them and have freed themselves to try to blossom elsewhere, being who they are, growing, but also carrying the guilt for what they had to leave behind.

It could be the story of Cuban artist Diana Fonseca, and also that of thousands of people who believed that leaving was the right thing to do, no matter how painful it was. Separation from what is dear to us leaves scars that are difficult to heal, and Fonseca thinks about them, feels them, and transforms them. She delves into them, and from the sting emerge works that speak of longing, of a past that separation sweetens, of the uprooting that comes from living in a place that is not home. But also of dreams that can still be achieved, of hope, of what once was and, above all, of what is yet to come.

An assembly of dripping pipes outlines the profile of Havana at the back of room 014 at La Térmica. In the middle of it, a cage extends its bars beyond the floor, chains thicken its shackles, and a bookcase contains all the possible meanings of the word time on the spines of its volumes, arranged in a circle that loses its balance, fractures, and opens, like a parenthesis in which the wheel stops and everything can begin to fall.

However, the hands continue to mark the hours, which pass inexorably, even if it is on incomplete clocks, missing the pieces left behind by the broken movement, which are put back together thousands of kilometers away, on the other side of the ocean. We will have to search, start again, and there will be a moment when nostalgia returns and brings back that childhood game, that instant when the memory was sewn into our skin forever.

In the exhibition ‘Entelequia’, Diana Fonseca draws a rich and sinuous map full of nuances that takes visitors to the shy and beautiful interior that the artist keeps hidden and that comes to the surface in her creative work to thrill everyone who has the pleasure of getting to know her. La Térmica, the contemporary culture center of the Provincial Council of Málaga, has had the honor of hosting some of her most recent pieces and sharing with her the process of symbolic transformation of everyday objects. It is a journey we have embarked on with our usual passion, and one that has enriched us as first experiences always do.