ME LLAMO ANA, ENCANTDA-2023

Text: Andrea Perissinotto

Curator of the exhibition

One of the gifts I received for my last birthday was an hourglass, although sand as such had very little, because the grains of sand were actually like very small golden metal spheres. When I turned it over, after a few dramatic moments in which a waterfall of burnished microspheres was descending with all its vigour, until colliding with the concave glass walls when, suddenly, the little balls got stuck for the surprise of all us who were witnessing that brilliant transposition of our own time.

The author of the gift was quick to apologize, adding that she would have exchanged it for another that “worked”. At first it seemed the most opportune thing to do, however, as I continued contemplating that rebellious artifact, I saw in it an amulet to deceive traditions, I guessed… somehow, that was giving me another perception of the passage of time, out of control and without borders. With no room for exact measurement, from defined to undefined, certain to uncertain: unpredictably free.

When Hana Jaeger arrived in Madrid three years ago, in 2020, she also turned her watch and, like mine, it suddenly stopped. In that sand there were mixed emotions, dreams, hopes and, of course, also the uncertainty that any life change brings with it. Without being able to flow into the expected future, those feelings were trapped in an exhausting waiting period marked by so many uncertainties. That cluster of enigmas had a name: COVID 19. Apandemic that we all endured, although, of course, in different ways; that inner struggle that we had to fight by allying ourselves with blind hope and resilience while witnessing our own tragedy and that of others ( in the case of those of us who at the end survived, it was the most painful experience that marked a before and after in our lives), is reflected on the canvases and boxes that the artist presents to the public for the first time in her also first individual exhibition in Madrid.

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