The Story Behind This Book
The spiritual world that has the capacity to enliven a work of art is often more important than the work of art itself. “At times it is troublesome that the artwork monopolizes and defines our artistic interest. The works of art are always emanations, consequences, effects that illuminate the life of the individual, the artist,” expressed art critic Orlando Hernandez, clarifying the particular struggle between life and work.
Jorge Luis Alvarez Pupo, has developed a body of work representing a universe formed by the rituals of faith through which human beings are able to enter the spiritual world. The images that appear in his photographs are completed in the mind of the spectator through the chain of events of one’s own experiences and remembrances, through the manner in which the mystical and interior selves have been developed, through beliefs and faith—if not through ritual and prayer then through thoughts, desires, or “visions.”
Or simply through the idea that every one of us is formed by the religious collective consciousness that defines the cultural context of our country,where those who are not practitioners are not able to avoid the indirect daily contact. Thus art openly transmits life to us.
In these impressions in black-and-white that Pupo produces in the penumbra of the darkroom, images of human beings emerge from the shadows with the first light, like Oloddumare did when created all of nature and human beings, seizing them from the darkness of the reign of Echu. Men appear who fight against the elements in their primitive nakedness, on whose faces we see the gaze of terror at the forces of the power of fire shadow, and destiny.
With his photographs, Pupo succeeds in capturing every kind of movement - the rhythm of the dance, the twisted movements of the possessed as they fall in a trance, the slow changes in the firelight, or the lingering form of the imagined moving spirits - like the near imperceptible vibrations that consume the spirit world.
Mabel Llevat Soy.
Art critic and Curator
