KOINONIA
"My art is a way of re-establishing the links that bind me to the universe". Ana Mendieta, artist and performer
Koinonia: (Κοινωνία), from the Greek, communion.
A body goes into the water. It becomes light and floats. It's simple physics. In real life you can obey formulas and solve whatever science dictates, because everything has its explanation. A walk in the countryside renews the joy of our spirit, it is a ritual celebration of life. But when we connect internally with Nature and its elements, the external reality is transformed and we understand that we are just another link in the chain of life. It is then that this contact with nature becomes a mystical experience of plenitude, a sense of expansion that connects the being internally with all that his eyes see and his heart feels. A perfect communion, a koinonia.
Isa Sanz's work Koinonía reveals her proximity between artistic creation and a deep philosophical intuition of reality, exploring through this series of photographs feminine strength, calm, integration with nature, colour, blood, water and magic, elements deeply linked to the construction of the feminine. Sanz's photography also evidences the ephemeral character that envelops us. She submerges herself beyond the epidermis, refuses the surface and prefers to dive inwards, exploring the nooks and crannies of existence. He reacts to the current, to the tide, to the winds and obtains results that lead the spectator to different conclusions, but always from the gaze that connects us with the primordial.
The spectacular setting for the Koininía series is Ibiza, the magical island that has been home to the author for several years. Ibiza, the setting for this work could not be otherwise, is the peaceful and tolerant island that nourishes and feeds the spirituality of those who connect to its red earth. The artist uses her privileged natural environment as an instrument of construction of the human mind - although it undeniably exists in aesthetic conditions per se -, firstly through an intimate act of recognition, where she appropriates nature and feels it, to be subsequently interpreted artistically, thus giving a complete turn in the process of creation. Isa Sanz becomes aware of Ibiza, -his island-, as the place where life happens, a space whose nature exerts such a power that it minimises us by integrating us into it, at the same time as it connects us with a feeling of existence and common belonging.
Through these self-portraits Isabel Sanz speaks of her position in the world; her body transmits the atmosphere of the landscape, and in turn, the landscape reflects the spirit of the author. Each of her photographs is a micro-story, a short story in which she relates her own identity and the landscape of the island as an emotional fact. In Koinonía, the author proposes a different vision of the female body through these intuited self-portraits, since in contrast to the rest of her work, where the frontality of the models is the norm, in practically none of the photographs she shows her face. Using her own body as the most truthful instrument, Isa Sanz reveals a spiritual form in which her vital vision and her creativity are combined, resulting in a work with an inherent charge of sensitivity and revelation. Her soul, her intimacy is sincere and reveals itself, showing itself to the outside through the imagined window of photography, where the light, Mediterranean and omnipresent, accentuates the poetics of her compositions.
These images were taken intuitively, in a complicated photographic exercise where the connection with the present took precedence, giving value to the experience of the act of photographing and posing in harmony with nature. Thus, the bodies fluctuate in perfect communion with the exterior, wandering and dazzling luminosity that struggles to make a place for itself in the most intimate corners. The choice of the tondo format to present the pieces is also no coincidence. The symbolism of the circle connects with the infinite, the eternal, and offers a new way of looking that breaks with the usual readings of art representation. The absolute and unlimited gaze, which proposes a challenge to the spectator.
The woman who appears in his work conveys an echo of poetic finesse and sensitivity bathed in freedom. The nude, claimed as the purest way to connect with the essence of each woman, reveals the paradox of the power of vulnerability and at the same time the courage involved in removing the layers of protection.
Menstrual cycles, the maternal womb, childbirth, have given rise to the linking of the female body and its mysteries with the natural world. Feminine consciousness is strongly linked to the body itself, a platform for creation and a territory for exploration. In Koinonia, there is a constant reference to blood - through the undulating red fabrics - an exceptional symbol of the dichotomy between life and death, of fertility and homicidal tragedy. This vital fluid is a reference to Isa Sanz's creative process, the means by which she manages to unite her most primitive beliefs and deepest emotions, connecting with an omnipresent feminine force.
Isa Sanz refers in her series to these vital moments of women: the woman who wraps herself and floats in a hollow between the rocks, as if it were a maternal womb, the birth, made of remains of water and blood, menstruation, flowing in the form of red tissue, or the fullness in symbiosis with the sea, the wind and the sky.... The primordial mysteries of the feminine have always been associated with nature through the intimacy of women; the olive trees represented by Sanz in perfect union with the woman, the poppies blooming in unison in the fields of the island, the yellow mown wheat, are symbols of fertility.
The Koinonia woman lives in a continuous symbiotic relationship with animals and plants, in a deep respect for the natural cycles of the earth. She is the woman who ensures the continuity of the group, guarantees fecundity and abundance, she is, in short, the sum, the origin and the end, and at the same time, the opposites; she is the undifferentiated divinity. Isa Sanz thus represents the soul of a woman who feels her connection to the Earth, a being who smells of poppies, red like passion and blood and who knows the mysteries of procreation, the potential of life growing and being nourished in the womb, followed by the sacred act of birth and who knows how to unveil herself in all her beauty. The artist, in the background, represents herself, she reveals her own connection to the nature of the island, conceiving spirituality as the union with all that exists. The path of awakening on which this series leads us can be summed up in a single word: integration.
The author's ultimate objective is to extol the experiential universe of women, but not with the aim of subverting the terms in which the category of woman has been related throughout history. Her concept of femininity is constructed through photographic language, from the perspective of a woman who authentically reflects her essence, without the filter of the male gaze, but with the conviction that real equality can be built from the diversity of the sexes. Koinonía shows, in short, the need to recover the balance with the banished feminine archetype in order to establish internal and external harmony.
Elvira Rilova. Art Historian.