REFERENCIAS: EXPLORING THE MASK IN THE WORK OF CRISTINA GARCIA RODERO
Her photography captures the moments when we step away from our everyday rhythm to honor local traditions and connect with others, merging the spiritual with the carnal in the fiesta.
Her archive also serves as a vital repository that preserves the culture and art of the Spanish towns and villages usually left at the margins.
García Rodero and her gaze are pivotal as we explore the hidden layers of our tradition that history has often overlooked. Her photographic work is invaluable, not only for the evocative power of the images but also for her ability to select and frame elements of reality that create dreamlike characters and scenes. Her archive also serves as a vital repository that preserves the culture and art of the Spanish towns and villages usually left at the margins, which are now blending into the monochrome rainbow of globalization due to rural depopulation and the aging of their population.
Although Cristina should be regarded as an artist and not as a chronicler, her work is sometimes more vital than that of a historian, because the traditions of Hidden Spain do not have a conventional history. There are no disruptions between their past and present, but continuities that get lost in the memory of the elders, and promises upheld for centuries. Jarramplas, Colacho, and the Botarga persist through time in different individuals.
The men and women who wear the masks are temporal and belong to history. The masks, as myths, stand outside of it.