It is a joy to share with you Clavileño, a piece with which I won Second Place in the XXVI National Visual
Arts Contest, in the modality of Printmaking, organized by the Museo Iconográfico del Quijote and that
now, proudly, will be part of its permanent collection.
What I did in this piece was to materialize the chapter of Don Quixote called Clavileño, in which he and
his ever ally Sancho Panza are locked inside a wooden horse by some dukes, who blindfold them and
make them believe through movements and pirouettes that they are flying through the skies.
Personally, it was a real thematic challenge to sustain a dialogue between the plate, the narration and
myself to give life to this passage, which relates a deception that surrounds the duo of characters and
their fantasy of eternal innocence and naivety, as if they were at a fair.
I made this image with the techniques of aquatint, etching and white varnish, normally used for metal
engraving. In it I represented the exact moment when Quixote and Sancho Panza are inside Clavileño
the horse, who in turn is spitting fire from his mouth. In the back I placed the dukes in the form of
shadows, on whose heads are white twinkling stars, giving the illusion of being fused with the night
itself, the night in which they perpetrated the deception.
It is worth noting that, in the original text, both Quixote and Sancho are blindfolded. At the beginning,
when I was making the sketch of the Clavileño print, I had blindfolded them, but I felt that they lacked
the essence of what I do. They should know that for the most part all my characters are looking at the
viewing public. This trademark style of mine is based on the idea of opening the invitation to a reciprocal
dialogue, to see each other, to look at each other; it is as if my characters were saying "As you see me, I
see you";. That´s how I feel the representation of pre-Hispanic ceramics would be today, it´s as if there
were always a contact. And I brought that to my images, where most of them are looking from the front,
three quarters or profile. So, it became part of my personal challenge to make the decision to personify
the duo with their eyes open.
When I made the eyes open for these characters I realized that it was enlivening them again and that I
was breaking away from a "faithful"; interpretation of what the chapter looks like and adapting it to my
artistic character. In addition, the gesture of blindfolding seems to me very abusive, which is why I also
removed that burden of injustice and gave them back their connection with the world, even when it
seems that they are enclosed and isolated, fictionally they do not lose the possibility of expressing
themselves, of manifesting themselves in the work.
Redacción: Carla Aguilar Cervantes.
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