
Pedro Pablo Oliva
Muchacha condenada a vivir con una piedra en la cabeza, from the series Eternas condenas, 2009Bronze sculpture, 94 x 56 x 23 cm.

The strange Muchacha condenada a vivir con una piedra en la cabeza (Young lady condemned to live with a stone on her head) is a sculpture with a tenderly metaphoric beauty. In this work, the artist astonishes us with a visual poetry that belongs to the highest level. It is about an oneiric image, one that seems to have emerged from a dream. This is an angelic being, one that is condemned to live between two rocks: one of them is useful as a pedestal, and the other one oppresses her whole body. A naked body, rolled on itself in a fetal position, as if it had recently been born to the world; with weird marks on the back, as if the skin was changing, as if it was in transit to another state of nature. Two symbols characteristic of Oliva’s pictorial poetics are combined in this sculpture: stone and lizard. The stone is a visual symbol of the weight of all limitations, obstacles, and constraints that society, political systems, and moral prejudices imposed to people, to the full development of individuality. On its side, the lizard is the metaphor of change, simulation, and opportune camouflage. The lizard changes the skin depending on the environment, the circumstances. It needs to be invisible to the sight of its potential predators. This strange young lady, whose face denotes quietness, seems to be immersed in a deep sleep, or in a state of trance, of meditation. Will she change her skin like the lizard? Will she be free and satisfied in her nature? Or, will she continue bearing, in a submissive way, the weight of the stone, of the oppression, of the spiritual shutting in? In order to know, Oliva invites us to get lost in the delight of his visual poetry, a delight that freezes time and introduces us in the eternity of art.