Sallisa Rosa works with memory, formed in clay works, drawings, installations, photographs, and other media. There are incarnate mysteries that we experience in contact with the objects and spaces she produces. Our sensitive presence encounters others that have been there longer, and history is made in an overdue dialogue. Collecting is a central procedure of her work. For her objects or installations, the artist collects clay from different territories. I wonder if the earth has a memory of its own – of its uses and, consequently, of the abuses it has suffered. So I take clay as an ancestral memory, as the sediment of history.
Memory is also an attribute of plants, animals, rivers, and other beings. They all record their trajectory, the absorption of time, and transformations of place. Branches, for example, reveal the ways in which a tree responds to the scarcity or abundance of water, changes in the soil, air, and interactions with other bodies. In dealing with this material, Sallisa Rosa is working with historical material. When she collects elements for her works, perhaps she is collecting documents from a history that has not yet been told and which is elaborated by the gestures of building. I wonder if it’s possible to inherit gestures when handling a material loaded with time, like a memory of touches. The gesture is the expression of a body that, at every moment, deals with the set of memories inscribed in it. With these gestures, the artist erects objects that grow like hollow bodies or beings made up of sutured fragments. She erects walls, invents new places, new territories. With the gestures she inherits, she takes part in the use of the land.
Her practice is also anchored in collectivity when she brings together a group of people to work, be, eat, plant, think, and feel together. In these moments, the artwork is born from the sharing of knowledge about construction, materials, modeling, ceramic firing, among others. The ways of making narrate these encounters and condense the specific knowledge of a group – their way of dealing with life. With the memory of matter, organized by the gestures of those who work, Rosa’s work constructs a narrative in which time takes the form of her labyrinth: there are several entrances and exits, and the paths are spiral. Outside of linearity, it is possible to return to where you came from to experience smells, sounds, and temperatures. In the labyrinth, the body moves forward by intuition, risking getting lost just to see what’s on the other side of a wall. There are always other sides – and each path leads to another.
