Solange Baques

Paper stories

During my childhood and youth, I fantasized about imaginary landscapes connected to our family-owned ‘paper’ company. My journey to Finland took me to the true birthplace of these scenes. While capturing these images, a complex network was built between the places I was visiting, the vanishing memories and paper; that substance which the paper company had produced for years. The act of piercing and printing images on paper has produced a transformation that reduced the gap by connecting stories.

Routine
3+31+30+10=74
7:00 am the alarm goes off
I take a pill
7:30 I get up, I wrap up warm
It’s cold. I walk to the little yellow house
It’s still dark
I climb the stairs, grab a cushion and wrap a blanket around me
I meditate for 45 minutes,
I climb down the stairs, I wrap up warm again, I go across to the little blue house and get
breakfast ready
1 hot coffee, 1 piece of fruit, 1 piece of toast
Only three of us left
I wrap up warm again and go out
With my Nikon (camera)
It’s snowing, it’s cold, I reach the lake
No people around, just two storks
Later, a light lunch
A salad and fish
We add fermented vegetables, as protection against COVID
I do some editing. I draw. I listen to music
Random, no preferences
Sometimes I feel it bothers me and I turn it off

Paper stories

Die-cutting equipment pierces a landscape that becomes blurred and vanishes. The action of piercing triggers a rupture, perhaps a path between memories and matter. We can neither retain what vanishes nor prevent the memory function from becoming volatile. This rupture may act like a void suspended in space where these transformations gather, and in doing so preserve the capricious link between history and the present time.
During my childhood and youth, I fantasized about imaginary landscapes connected to our family-owned ‘paper’ company. My journey to Finland took me to the true birthplace of these scenes. While capturing these images, a complex network was built between the places I was visiting, the vanishing memories and paper; that substance which the paper company had produced for years. The act of piercing and printing images on paper has produced a transformation that reduced the gap by connecting stories and enabling me to build a bridge between the beginning of my life and the impending loss of my parents.