Brenda Franco; Wandering in Silence

To select a sheet of paper is like beginning a journey. Like roads, each sheet of paper leads to different places. To grab hold of any of them is to also choose a destiny. This reflection probably dwelt deep in Brenda Franco´s heart some years ago as she stepped across the thresholds of so many paper shops in Shanghai. Following in the steps of a millenary tradition (a grand though simplistic phrase to summarize paths trodden in the face of reflection, history and human creations),oriental paper makers turned their backs on immediacy, denied the fleeting and opted instead for the eternal.

To hold on one´s hand a sheet of artisanal rice paper, is to hold between one´s fingers a centuries old encyclopedic knowledge, the weight of which, in simplified terms, has now become a monument to lightness and fragility. That delicate and complex extract is more a breeze than a gale.

The first thing to rest upon those sheets of paper is a glance, and to make the latter one´s own, there is touch. To give it foundation, there are other sheets of paper and to say something making use of its whiteness as language, there is ink which suddenly inhabits it. It is not about an intervention, it is a complement.

What is the sound of droplets falling on the paper? The sound is soft, velvety, fine, and only noticeable within the silent intimacy of a dialogue just started. These droplets have begun a long path which the paper cherishes silently. Thus begin the movements of repose and stillness.

To Brenda Franco those spread droplets, of different quality and size, are the people in her life´s wandering. Anonymous masses on eternal passages, barely glancing at each other to avoid collision. To follow en route is the watchword. There are no limits to these movements. There are no borders in sight. Humanity´s history is, as we well know, the history of its migrations.

This is a return to the ancestral origin, against the grain of new technologies. Whereas these last ones detect every movement and are capable of capturing us all in a web that makes us vulnerable, ink droplets, simple and powerful, give away humanity´s restless records. That is why they are now immobile, although in their stunning quietude there is still the movement which gave life to them.

There are no names or identities; there is existence, a collectivity caught in its random essence. Their wandering has been recorded, that is all. The path they will follow or their wandering´s origin matter not at all. They were there and that is what matters. They are passages from nowhere to unknown; pilgrimages towards the gregarious. That which unites us all and makes us commune now and throughout all of history.

The molecular is magnified in function of the detail. That which is tinniest of all gains suddenly an enormous proportion within the miniscule. Like in the work of Brenda Franco, we are the points of convergence in the temporal spaces of our lives. I can´t help but think about how, within that minimum which we all are, lies too the enormity of our discreet existence.

We are those millions of dispersed dots within communities united in a single moment in time, which is the only time we have here. We are the instantaneous portrait of a discreet and telltale passing of our most primitive human needs. To wander with no borders in sight is to be inside the appointed space of freedom.

Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros

January 2017