Stamping, sealing and sublimating: What surfaces are imprinted on the cloths, towels and homemade shrouds that inhabit our most intimate spaces? What do these surfaces imprinted on our bodies tell us, and what do they want to convey? To think of the image of Veronica, one of the women who spread a veil over the face of Christ on the way of the cross to his death, is to inhabit the sacred images of a drag identity. With a touch of irony and allegory, a certain idea of metamorphosis comes to mind.
This exercise and investigation of almost six years becomes a process of sublimation that Andrés Parra, and his alter ego Nia De Indias, take up again to give an autobiographical view that moves between the sacred and the autobiographical. This mixture of positive and negative, translated into photographs, make-up removal wipes and a full-body shroud, attempts to recreate the image of Veronica, seeking in it the answer to that great question about the VERA ICON: the true image.
This quest to experience an image not made by human hands is in dialogue with the historical process and the images of Veronica. The shroud, the make-up removal wipes, which seem to be the remains of a drag montage, and the photographic record of the performance, which shows the process of sublimation of the image, link the two worlds: the religious biography of the artist and the practice of drag. This link, which seems so far away, finds a bridge for dialogue (albeit in an ironic way and with a desire for intervention) in the process: the visual production that constructs this exhibition is not based on retouching and interventions, these are images where there is no fiction, no great "make-up", no digital or procedural retouching. Nia De Indias, the artist's drag alter ego, is born and dies in this process. He finds his life in the construction of his image, while at the same time, each wipe of make-up remover is shaped as a fundamental death.
Thus, through the imaginary of Veronica, rethought to imprint this Vera icon through make-up, the artist invites us to reflect on the possible links between the sacred and drag, while at the same time questioning us: How is the drag ritual also a shroud, shaped, imprinted and sublimated on a surface that seals its death?
Gonzalo Medina, journalist and cultural manager.
November 2023.
November 2023.
Photography: Jaime Lagos
Production: David Hurtado | Sebastián Leal.
