Like a Flash of Brilliance

By Emilia Casiva

According to Mónica Millán, the simplest of stitches, the most fundamental element of sewing, is the stitch that holds everything together while preparing a new fabric. It is called the basting stitch or tack, and it is the stitch that supports the design. If it works, it is because its existence is merely temporary, and because it is practically invisible. It is a spider’s web; its thinness gives it a fragile appearance that belies its tenacity. The basting must be soft yet firm, like all it binds, all it supports.

Mónica Millán was born in the old town of San Ignacio, Misiones, next to that dazzling jungle, and she has come and gone from there over the years. The colours, sounds, air and humidity of the jungle have marked her life and work, so much so that the latter is nourished, more than by a botanical method, by the wisdom of the living, by the time between the stitches that grow slowly, measuredly, or the softness of the cotton that weaves the image, and also by the violence of the needle piercing and making the bud explode. The landscape in her works is not a ‘theme’ but a sense. Her works show that, like the threads on the backside of an embroidery, everything moves and becomes entangled in the dense jungle. Let’s have a look.

Apparitions

Millán carried out a long-term project between 2002 and 2012 that she called El vértigo de lo lento [The Vertigo of Slowness]. It began with a trip to Yataity del Guairá, a village in Paraguay that is renowned for its Ao Po’i weaving. Ao Po’i is the Guaraní word for ‘fine cloth or delicate garment’ and it is a cotton weaving technique. One day, Digna, one of the village weavers, showed Mónica a cotton bud she had brought with her from her back garden. She opened it with both hands and began

to rattle it about inside a weeder. The ball of cotton inflated, and Digna extracted the thread. After that trip, Mónica continued to visit Yataity over the next ten years because she was amazed not just by the images but by the material.

At first, the artist planned to paint portraits of the weavers, and so she first set out photographing them. But when she projected these images in order to begin painting them... When she traced the first lines that would act as the threads to guide her through the project... that was when the work appeared. And that was it. The story goes that this was how her series of drawings came to be, with her first sketching the soft contours in pencil on canvas by the light of the projector while the rest of the room sat in semi-darkness.

So, what do we do with these apparitions? We have to allow ourselves to be guided by them, to follow their trail even if it changes our plans, because these apparitions are like a gift that just needs time (like the cotton ball). That is why when we stand in front of these images, it is a question of giving them time, of living in them as if they were a presence before which we can gently lean forward. Another quality of these apparitions is that in order to see them, we have to take a step back. We have to take distance, relax our gaze, let our pupils drift. And then, just then, there is a transfiguration. With Millán’s drawings, it is when we take that step back that the faces of the Yataity weavers emerge before us from the fragments of the jungle that grows, throbs and teems within them and from which, at once, they take their shape and substance. Their bodies are scored with ribbing traced by the very fine, almost transparent line of graphite. They appear to have flowers in their hair, chlorophyll capillaries at their necks, and so much leaf litter stuck to their arms that they have turned into wings. The jungle clings, it clings to the weavers just as the weavers cling to it. But suddenly, the lines move, the eye no longer distinguishes the shapes from the background, and the figures that had appeared before our eyes are once again hidden. The jungle pulses and devours their faces. Of course, it is a paradoxical illusion, given that these portraits ultimately acquire their accuracy and fidelity to the real when they are more entangled in the landscape, though without completely transforming into it. It is not that they are optical illusions, but rather that they bring into play an imagination that is inseparable from that landscape. That is their ‘realism’; at first glance, there is no attachment to the real, nor to trying to discover any ‘hidden essences’ in this web of illusions. The drawings recalibrate the composition of the landscape and of the life that flourishes within it.

There is also another question that folds into this discussion and even expands it: Marta Dillon said that though Millán covered the canvas, tracing her lines in the

half-light of a darkened room, what she was doing was more like embroidery, even if the instrument she used for her stitches was a pencil rather than a needle. It is at that precise moment that her poetics emerge. First, overflowing the realms of the living (animal, mineral, vegetable, human and non-human) and second, overflowing the chambers of knowledge: drawing, painting, embroidery. Indeed, Ticio Escobar said that these drawings were lace. In any case, if we term them pointillist, it is because of the ‘stitches’ made by her graphite needle. This is how the skin of a cheek takes on the texture of embroidery, while the mist becomes lace. This is how the voices of the weavers swim in the fog of the graphite.1 This is how when Mónica draws, she actually embroiders, and how when she embroiders, she paints once again. What emerges, then, is a poetics of mixture.

Cuttings

In Llueve, no para de llover [It’s Raining, It Won’t Stop Raining] (2009), a wonderful, fleshy, hairy purple and orange flower almost flies over the delicate, ornamental grey drawing that stretches out below. The piece belongs to a series of drawing over which colour is reborn and geometry is beginning to be emerge. The concept of over is important because both the colours and geometry float over top of the drawings at the same time as they cast their subtle shadows on them. Words are also part of the visual texture of the series, appearing in the form of organic (in the sense of living) epigraphs. Having reached the peak of exuberance, the images jump (fall) onto the white canvas, imitating the movement of breathing, in, out, the jungle in the abyss, the jungle outside of itself. The drawings are scenes that tell stories; like the one of a couple locked in their farm in the middle of the jungle because it will not stop raining. Millán interviewed settlers in Pindayty and noted: ‘Emilia has not stopped weaving, emulating nature. Everything in her house is flourishing’. And so, Emilia and her husband pass the time untangling the balls of yarn, ordering them by colour. One day they celebrate their wedding anniversary, painting the garlands they will use to decorate and waiting for their guests on the veranda but nobody arrives; their neighbours have either sold their farms or moved to Posadas, or have not been able to come because the roads are closed due to rain (it has rained for 28 days straight) and the jungle continues its advance until it becomes an impenetrable tangled mess.

For several years now, Millán has been assembling an archive of slides sorted by

1 The project El vértigo de lo lento [The Vertigo of Slowness] included several productions, such as drawings, embroideries, interviews with the Yataity weavers, a museum of embroidery, and more.

patterns and shapes. From these, she extracts fragments of different origins to play with, projecting them onto a canvas so that she can draw over the top of them. This is why in the middle of a Mediterranean jungle we can see the tip of a coral from which a petal emerges, or, further on – it cannot be said whether it is in front or in behind – the tentacles of a jellyfish burst forth from an air plant. It is a mixture of the living and mixture of the process, which takes shape through collage, that technique dedicated to putting together those things that were not meant to be together. And collage, at the end of the day, is a type of montage. Everything suggests it is a montage governed by the rules of the cuttings, because the fragments are cut out in one place to be stuck in another and, from there, to grow. Antelopes, passionflowers, tacuara cane, lace, worms.

The process has been perfected in the works that belong to the series “El nacimiento de los colores” [‘The Birth of Colours’] (2011-2012), in which geometry and organic matter co-exist without violence and yet without disguising their subtle dialect of contradictions and fraternity, and are open in their historical relationship. Thus, while her graphite vines stretch towards a square of ñandutí lace, a hexagon of ribbons forms among the vaporous vegetation, multiplying inwards, giving birth to areas of pastel yellows and aqua green.

Gardens

At a certain point in Mónica’s work, the scraps of cloth she incorporated into the drawings gained a greater presence. The artist washes and starches fabrics, dyes them with colours (to the point they begin to resemble watercolours), and feels their weight in her hands. In the composition, the scraps incorporate ribbons, appliqués, bulbs of thread, and ju lace. It is a wild adventure of form, materials and technique. A fuchsia angle, a turquoise segment, a blue half-circle. Then, beginning with the “Anotaciones” [‘Annotations’] series from 2013, this exuberance takes a breath, a rest, and acquires a zen-like tactility. Millán’s work raises the argument that, in a garden, simplicity and abundance are both possible. And montage, according to Alexander Kluge, is just that: a garden, ‘the confrontation of two improbabilities that together result in a bit of life’.

Let’s take a step backwards. To say ‘the colour returns’ is to say that with it, something of those paintings from the “Viaje por el río” [‘The River Journey’] (19951996) series reappears. Small acrylics are covered in water hyacinth, orchids and virgins that travel downriver carried by the sensuous flow of the waters, and also

float among the wet leaves and decomposing fruits that cover and contain them. Their bright white veils, mantles and clusters constitute a lace-like configuration that is interwoven with the thick vegetation of the Paraná, a thickness that Millán condensed into her paintings of just 30 × 40 centimetres in size. The virgins offer themselves up like a dream-like vision of Mystical Rose invoked by the colours. Emerald green, lemon green, moss, vermilion and a brownish green that makes the lace gleam and dazzle, then silver green climbs and turns to syrupy scarlet.

This experience with colour that triggered the embroidery also provides a direct line to the texture and brilliance of her series, “Jardines del engaño” [‘Gardens of Deception’] (1999). We could go so far as to say that embroidery is a thread that stretches towards a decade of colours: the 1990s. Beads, buds, cords, bulrushes and living plots that grow until they reach the size of sculptures, each with its own greenery. One of them, Jardín de la novia [Bride Garden] rises through the lace and rhinestones until it is standing, forming a pearlescent crown that hides several spiders that are at work weaving a veil (a pure visual delight).

Planting

The girls have a place Where those wondrous things live (Charly García)

In Millán’s work, a garden is an active ingredient, a territory where culture and nature come together like vines that grow, stretching their arms, entangling their tendrils and hugging the wall that used to separate them, until they finally pierce through it. In the history of art, the opportunity to pierce that dichotomy of nature and culture, or rather, the possibility of setting it outside of itself has been, more often than not, the fruit of feminist powers and curiosities. Millán belongs to a constellation of artists that includes Elba Bairon, Cristina Shiavi, Adriana Bustos, and Claudia del Río, who, in the form and substance of their actions, left their own spaces to go out into a communal garden. They are well aware that a landscape is not born; it is made.

Moreover, the sowing of that landscape requires care, bodies and organisation, that is, a labour force. Seeds require time, the time of the earth that shapes the landscape of the hands. And since this is not an abstract, land becomes a social question. Since 2015, Millán has carried out the Plantío Rafael Barrett [Rafael Barrett Plantation] project together with Adriana Bustos. It consists of a series of actions (talks, plantings, fairs) that are dedicated to the mutual enrichment of the universes

of art, land, and words.2 In collaboration with rural and indigenous women, the action raised issues related to land ownership, the need for agrarian reform, the solidarity economy and food education.

Of course, Millán’s work involves tasks (spinning, sowing) with specific communities and the voices and knowledge of the weavers of Paraguay, of her fellow artists, and of the rural women of the Plantío Rafael Barrett. It must be emphasized that the compost that nourishes her work is shaped by a particular community, feminist and post-natural character (where there has been a shift with respect to the centrality of the human but also of ‘the natural’ of nature). These three elements are constitutive of her work and made up her DNA long before they became items on the agenda.

Sutras

For this gardener, the transition from painting to embroidery represented a return to her knowledge from childhood. So we could say that embroidery, more than making an appearance, returned, and with it came childhood, that place of origin that has already begun when we arrive, but that we continue to seek as we move forward. It is through the practice of meditation that the steps in Millán’s work (steps that are more like turns) find a way to recover that lost place of origin. After her stay in a Buddhist monastery, the artist learned the sutras (a Sanskrit term that means ‘threads’) and became a child once again. Childhood, art and meditation are the same in this respect, to the extent that they all make us experiment breathing in the present, a state of connection. Face-to-face with the living, one must find the substance and pulse of that breath (which is why the rhythm of embroidery accompanies it, combining the calm and alertness of the body). Among vines, mosquitoes, perspiration and creepers.

It is curious to think about it, but the mystery has nothing to do with silence but with folding what is seen over what is heard and thus achieving an understanding of vibrations. In her diary for one of her expeditions to the jungle, Millán noted: ‘The tip of the boat cuts through the water while I try to keep rhythm with the oar. With a concentrated look, a body more than attentive, the action of the oar to the left and to the right, while I observe that cutting point [...] That point.’ Like a flash of brilliance.

2 Launched in 2015, at the 1st International Art Biennial of Asunción, the artists, together with the National Coordinating Committee of Working, Rural and Indigenous Women’s Organisations (CONAMURI) planted a corn and cassava crop in a park in front of the National Congress.