LOUISE BENNETT

 

 

SHE BECOMES THEM

 

For one year I travelled on Art Fellowship all over the world. Europe, UK, USA, Peru, Brazil and Finland. Working in different ways – undertaking courses, art museum research, a studio artist assistant role, executing new bodies of artwork for exhibition in Peru, and working as an artist in residence in Brazil and Finland. During this time, I had my travelling artist kit made up of zoom sound recorder, light-weight tripod, iphone video camera, disposable cameras and their photos, a couple of essential art books, and journals. Visual journals, full of drawings and words – art ideas, research, lists, places to visit, gallery notes, tidbit gems from people, and a lot of Spanish language notes! These journals held so much. They had every "clever" thought, every relevant quote and to me, they held the answers to any of my pressing questions at the time! (haha)

 

By the time I arrived on residency in Brazil, 10 months into my travelling Fellowship, my bags were heavy. So many journals.

 

In conversation with Casa Ilha Residencia host Marina, we spoke about art and writing ideas stemmed from surrealist dreams, graffiti text in public spaces on the island, the words of Brazilian author Clarice Lispector and – my attachment to these journals, the weight of them: physically, artistically and emotionally.

 

 

“Let’s burn them”, she says.

 

“YES!”, I say. “Perfect”.

 

 

Burn them. Let them go.

 

 

On my last ‘fresh fish for dinner’ Saturday night, I burnt my journals in the Brazilan Churrasco BBQ. With little Issacy we roasted marshmallows on my burning words. The books started burning, the smoke invaded the house and gallery. It was all around us. We were breathing it in, talking it in.

 

Luciano cooked the fish he caught that day, and we all ate – eating ideas, inhaling notes and lightening the load.