One of the three artists that participate in the exhibition “Three rooms of their own” is Susana García Ungo, that has a long path as a visual artist and whith whom I have had the pleasure to collaborate several times. I asked her to choose one of her work at the exhibition and to explain the work and the ideas behind it. Susana accepted the proposal and chose the textile work “Y el final del cuento pa’ cuándo” (The end of the tale, when?), an artwork that you will see in front of you when you enter the exhibition hall of “el Ajuntament Vell” in Calpe.

Susana explains: – “This textile work is a part of a serie of works that consists of “drawing” on the fabric with a soldering iron and then I have added the threadwork, so the result is the interaction between both the thread and the drawing of small burned holes made by the soldering iron. I find the technique with the soldering iron interesting because the result and how the light passes through the burned holes varies a lot depending on the type of fabric and the composition. For example, on a black fabric you hardly see anything until you put a light behind it and it suddenly lights up. On satin, like this piece, you need to put a black fabric behind it, because otherwise you can hardly see anything either. On cotton fabrics, the burned holes get a beautiful golden-brownish colour. So, I keep on investigating and getting different results and this is part of a work about women that I have been carrying out for some time.

The pattern resembles that of a quilt with these diamond shapes and patterns you usually find on quilts – these are vaginas – and I got the idea for this work from a recording of Pepa Bueno (a Spanish journalist) in which she said these words: “whore or virgin, witch or saint, caretaker or infecter”. This was said in relation to all those hoaxes spread after the marches on last 8th March in Spain and that some political parties, especially Vox and right-wing parties, used to rage against feminism. It’s as usual: that dicotomy where women always fare badly…and then I added that sentence that says “and the end of the tale, when?” as a wink, as to say that it’s enough. And that’s the idea behind this work.

I’ve already done some works with embroidered sentences, for example on the textile work I will participate with at “Art al Vent” this year and that is a work about witches. And now, I continue working on the same line, making variations. Embroidering is like drawing and years ago feminism started using embroidery as a way to recover womens’ traditional work. That work that women had been doing in silence was brought out to the public space, to the museums, it was a way of speaking out. On the other hand, both embroidery and burning with the soldering iron are techniques that I like because they are slow techniques. And their symbolic translation would be something like: things are not as we are told, that is instantly and inmediate. Instead, we need time for everything. So this is a way to express that idea that we need time and that almost every thing with value has taken its time and in addition to that, this technique also calms the mind. To me personally it is helpful to calm my mind and I think it is important for women to have a calm mind. Maybe emotions are valued socially, but they should go together with a calm mind that is able to discern well. And well, this was a little about this technique.”