MARCEL·LA BARCELÓ

Marcel·la Barceló is a Mallorcan artist based in Paris:

“I was born in Mallorca, and grew up in two places: Paris, the grey city, and here, between the mountains and the sea. I know it is a great fortune to have grown up with one foot in each place and two ways of approaching reality. In Mallorca I learned to fish, I learned the names of plants and how to observe the seasons, the violence of nature. It was a perfect setting for witchcraft stories and freedom of imagination. In Paris, I played with fashion and disguises, wandering through cafés and libraries.

My grandmother was a painter, and it was she who initiated my father and gave him his first watercolors. When I was a child, my vision of painting was as banal as cooking dinner or taking a shower. It was part of the rhythm of the day, because that’s the example I always received.

I had this feeling of injustice when my father said he was going to work: “No, you spend your day drawing and painting, I have to go to school and do math”.

He would reply “Painting is the hardest job in the world, one day you’ll understand.”

I never thought about becoming an artist, I just never stopped drawing: all children draw, but I had the example of not having to stop.

Marcel·la’s paintings are colourful, fantastical postcards from a dream, like portals to another world. She has travelled extensively to Japan, for her another great source of inspiration.

“I often have the impression that the great difference between Japanese art and classical Western art lies in the representation of man’s relationship with nature, particularly when we look at the theme of vanity and its Japanese equivalent (which ultimately seems to be its opposite) mono no aware :

Vanity, allegorized by still life, seems to freeze the living, where the elements of the world would be, like the naturalist heritage of occidental thought, dominated by man: cut flowers, dead animals-already meat. Where mono no aware represents what lives to speak of the ephemeral: fruits in Nihonga prints are still depicted on tree branches, birds not hung by their feet as in Melendez’s bodegons, but caught in flight, fish not decapitated on a table, but swirling in the water. Cherry blossoms, to say that everything will disappear.  

When I discovered Shintoism, I made the link between my relationship with nature and the Kamis. Kamis lurk everywhere, and are ambivalent: beneficial, but also sometimes extremely violent, as nature itself is.

In the understanding of the Shinto world, the relationship with nature does not place man above or at the center, but as part of a whole: it’s not a question of controlling or dominating nature, as the Western naturalist heritage would indicate, but of living in alliance. In animism, every event (rain, earthquake, wind...) is associated with a supernatural life that imbues it with meaning, the two paradigms (material - spiritual) intermingle in permanent coexistence.”

The figures in Marcel·la’s paintings, often nude but androgenous, seem almost alien, fantasmagorical, childlike, pure, innocent and at one with the natural landscape they are in as opposed to our anthropocentric vision of the world. There are very few “human-made” objects, structures or constructions in her work. 

“The damage caused by mass tourism in Mallorca made me aware of environmental problems from an early age. Year after year, the stars in the sky became less and less visible as human lights multiplied. The garrigue was being nibbled away by new hotels and gleaming holiday homes, and the llaüts in the little port were being replaced by immaculate yachts whose owners spent their time polishing them with gallons of fresh water. My mother taught me to get into the habit of cleaning up the beaches. Every time we went out to sea, we’d bring big bags and fill them with these toxic plastic finds. Summer after summer, the bags got heavier and heavier.

I’m getting closer to the tales, traditions and beliefs of the island, which were an important part of my childhood and therefore a great influence. Technical traditions and craft skills, such as woven palm leaves, « brodades » jars (vases decorated with shells and plant motifs) and siurells (traditional whistles used to call the cattle, in the shape of figures or animals), but also the village festivals in which I took part as a child, such as the Sant Antoni devil masks.

The idea of insularity is also important to me: I’ve just read La invention de Morel, by Bioy Casares. This theme of haunted solitude speaks to me a lot, and I think studio life is a bit like that, being on a desert island, alone, but haunted by images with which you tirelessly try to communicate.

I see islands as allegories of consciousness, an attainable zone in the middle of a sea of unknown depths. The island contains thousands of fantasies and fantastic stories (Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Doctor Moreau’s Island...) and today continues to feed fantasies of well-being and happiness, which explains the growing mass tourism, which dreams of paradise islands: this is currently a real problem in Mallorca. The current tourism model affects everything, ecologically and socially: excessive new construction, degradation and pollution of the coast and sea, and difficulties in accessing housing.

It’s important to demand a change.”