“The Koinonia work of Isa Sanz reveals the closeness between the artistic creation and a deep philosophical intuition of reality, exploring through this series of photographs the feminine strength, calm, integration with nature, color, blood, water and magic, elements heavily linked to the construction of the feminine. Sanz photography also evidences the ephemeral nature that surrounds us. It immerses more beyond the epidermis, refuses to surface and prefers to dive into the interior, exploring every nooks and crannies of existence. It responds to the currents, tides, winds and obtains results that lead the viewer to different conclusions, but always from the perspective that connects us with the primal."
Elvira Rilova, art historian.
KOINONÍA | The place I inhabit is also myself.
Even though the images from these series were at first carefully thought, I made some of them out of absolute improvisation. I used to go out with my camera and the equipment looking for something to interact with, and when I had founded it, I would dedicate myself to experience the moment, to feel what was taking place, so the staging would become something real, something that was happening.
To join the landscape myself and become part of it, brought me to experiences that I wanted to convey in my photographs. While I was submerged in water, in a fetal position, I transferred myself to the uterus. Another time, I experienced something that could be described as a birth, when I was delivered to the shore by the water. Or playing with the wind, which recalled childhood emotions and made me feel an immense joy.
Red color, color of passion, of strength, and the color of the menstrual blood. I used fabrics of this color in order to show sometimes imperceptible items, as the water movement, the blowing of the wind, or the emptiness of a crevasse. To emphasize forces challenging the gravity, as a tree’s verticality. Or to blend with poppies in a flower’s field. Isn’t it a miracle that all of them grow together? Maybe that’s God.
About the circular shape of the images, I asked myself: why should everything be framed? Why would we need to stick to reading standards as left-right or up-down? Where does a work start and finish? To me, this work's reading should be done from the center to the edges. I propose here a different way of looking, more endless, more expansive, more feminine.
While making this work I thought about cave art and I felt like a cave painter, the difference being that I replaced the pigments, the blood and the rock, for the fabrics, my body surrounded by nature and the digital sensor.
This series were created in Ibiza, where I arrived in June of 2010 and decided that it would be my home after looking at a sunset in Es Vedrá. I felt from the beginning that this island nourishes me, feeds me, gives me. I felt part of this place. My relationship with Ibiza has been forged at the roads and the tracks, with sensations. I have felt that in this small surrounding I have everything within my reach, I always have the Sun, the Moon and the stars in sight. I experienced here to be in communion, in Koinonia, with the space I inhabit, which is also myself.
(Traducción: Adrián Díaz Mantecón)