Bicicletas de óleo
2013 / 12
Santiago, Chile.
Where I grew up, half the children had bicycles. Unfortunately, I belonged to the other group, those without such marvelous machines. I joined the cyclists only in my dreams and hidden desires. I was one of six siblings. The two eldest had bikes, and they were too big for the rest of us. The rest of us lived with an undying, unfulfilled desire to ride. We could see how the bicycle offered an instantaneous power to construct a community, a group of friends in which expeditions were an everyday occurrence and competitions arose from the love between companions. I was thrilled when a bicycle appeared, miraculously and magically, to be shared between my two sisters and me.
The three of us decided democratically to take turns. We created a route up a long hill to a cemetery and back. Each had to ride it as fast as we could, arriving home to hand off the bike to the next. When we caught up with other kids on their own racecources, they sometimes came back to start over with us. This went on for entire summers. We built a community in the neighbourhood where sports were the main connection. We had bike contests, we ran, we skated on the streets, we played baseball and soccer, we were cheerleaders, we rode terrifying downhills. Age and sex didn’t affect the growth of the group. We were equal on the bike. I was happy.
The bike evolved in me as I grew. It became my daily transportation, my companion for trips along the coast, and a reason to meet up with others who experienced the bike in the same way as me. I have marvellous memories of riding a bike in the north of Chile and in cosmopolitan cities like New York without feeling the slightest fear.
Today in Montreal, this incredible invention remains part of my life. My artistic pursuits gave birth to the idea of manifesting the bicycle through oils as a metaphor for all those memories and unique experiences.
I aim to seduce others with a circle: a wheel. This circle has accompanied me through an evolution in my everyday life and my creative life. Through the bicycle, I will raise questions about changes in transport policy and I will share the possibility of traveling together in a trip that goes beyond any route, traversing instead our day-to-day relations with one another. These works seek to open a space for reflection on the use of bicycles that goes beyond the quotidian construction of urban cycling, and gives it instead an artistic and sociocultural context.
I want to share the colours and the textures that for me represent such a simple interaction as the meeting of eyes or the fleeting smile that appears when I mount a bicycle and I can say clearly, this makes me happy.