Surveying the world anew 

about the work of the artist Amalia Valdés

by Daniela von Damaros

In: Anahita Contemporary (ed.): ÁNIMA, Amalia Valdés, solo exhibition 08.09.-23.10.2021, Berlin.

It was on a hot day, in the late summer of 2019, when I first met Amalia Valdés and I told her about my recent journey. It was a spiritual journey, guided by questions about my origins and identity. Today, when I think back on our conversation, I realize that it was characterized by an extraordinary atmosphere. Openness and mutual curiosity allowed us to dive into a space that opened up between us. It was a different space from the real one. The visible environment disappeared and with it the people around us. What I felt was the connection that emerged between us, based on the values and interpersonal gestures that we shared.

"The soul is the body touched."[1] French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (b. 1940) wrote to explore the theme of touch in times of pandemic. According to this, touch goes far beyond the physical, beyond the touch of the skin. A comprehension of touch on a spiritual level demands to feel: a closeness that can arise between two soul bodies[2], already during a conversation or through compassion. The Corona crisis has shown us with clarity how vulnerable we are and how fragile the system is. But does it take such a state of insecurity to become sensitive? To be able to perceive what otherwise remains hidden?

The moment I got to know Amalia Valdés was - without being aware of it at the time - at the same time also an entry into her artistic work. In her work process, the artist explores questions similar to those about our earthly existence. The pictorial worlds that emerge from this are symbolic. They awaken the sentient body and act like luminous signposts to connections in the interpersonal as well as to the whole: to a cosmic order of the world.

"Under the starry sky comprehend the whole"[3] was once formulated by the quantum physicist and "artist scientist" Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976). According to his theory, there is not only a particle, but always a field. Only through interaction of forces a particle becomes visible. Heisenberg thus understands the individual as always woven into the whole of reality and reality as a sea of possibilities. "This suspended state of the world coagulates into reality only through conscious observation,"[4] according to Heisenberg. Thus, Amalia Valdés also observes the state of the world as a whole in her work and allows this to flow together in wall reliefs and sculptures made of the most diverse materials, for a perceptibility by the observer.

The most common basic element of her work design is the simplest form in geometry: the triangle. The term "geometry" derives from the Latin word "geometria" and from ancient Greek γεωμετρία (geōmetría). Both mean "to measure land." This ancient discipline is present throughout nature and consequently is the smallest structure of any existence, from molecules to galaxies. It even precedes and therefore underlies human history.[5] This is how the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) summarized it: The smallest unit consists of three details.[6] Accordingly, the triangle would also correspond to a visualization of Heisenberg's quantum theory.

Valdés' artistic method of "surveying" with a stylistics characterized by geometric forms is guided less by rigid method than by intuition. The artist weaves the triangle as a constant through form-aesthetic repetition into "triangular colonies,"[7] that is, into a rhythmic, seemingly infinite variety of structures that give rise to Platonic bodies[8] and abstracted figures on the picture support. With a view to the indigenous cultures in her home continent of South America, the artist also incorporates millennia-old symbols such as the chakana[9] or the whipala into her pictorial design.