Relaciones internacionales.indb - HOMINES

LIZETTE LUGO
which are also part of the image.
Recently I started a process of recycling my works. After nearly 20
years of printmaking, I took a close look at my studio and found a vast
production of printed images. My whole evolution was there for me to
rethink from today’s perspective. Soon the thinking was replaced by the
cutting and then by the pasting. Through the use of collage, I am having
lots of fun with all the parts and pieces of my imagery coming back together
in a different context. Sometimes I paint or draw on them, but these
pieces are mostly created from silk screen prints I, myself, hand pulled.
The energy generated by these works catapulted my crossing the border
into tridimensionality. Some, like “El Aposento” (The Chamber), have a
wood surface as a support, but printed paper by itself is responsible for
many of the protruding forms. In this respect, I am challenging a campaign
prejudiced toward paper, which is deemed as a bad investment in PR. I am
saying it is as excellent and enduring as any other surface.
In “Hilvanando una Isla” (Threading an Island) the printed paper is
freestanding or hanging, attached and fixed in place by strings which exert
tension in the same fashion as tension exists in the Vieques affair which
was ever present in the process of creating this piece. The island or islands
are isolated but not alone, for intervention is as aggressive as the strings
that rip through the fragments of the serigraphs. So I am telling a story.
It is my story. It is our history. We have been mixing for centuries, we are
multilingual, we are multiracial and our art will definitely show this.
The last piece I worked on before coming here, using collage and
painting over a 1995 print, “Llena tu casa de flores” (Fill your home with
flowers) can serve as the closing statement for a never ending process. I
came home, home to where contrast and contradictions are the norm, where
color and rhythm envelop you, where nature and people flourish, home
where I have my roots and fight my struggles. Through my printmaking I
am filling my home with flowers, strings attached.
• HOMINES • Vol. XX, Núm. x - xxxxx de 2005
xxxi