Introductory Remarks for the Opening

“Bridges Between Cultures”
Introductory Remarks for the Exhibition Opening of Jorge da Cruz
Munich, 19 July 2011
by Christine Hubenthal

Jorge invited me to say a few words at the opening of this exhibition. That is, of course, a great honor for me – thank you!

I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about the place where most of the works Jorge is showing here were created: South India, Tamil Nadu.

I lived in India from 2005 to 2007, working in agriculture. On one trip, I visited Pondicherry, where – quite unexpectedly – a Portuguese man sat down at my café table. We started talking. It was Jorge Cruz, who told me he was a painter and had come to Pondicherry with a grant from the Portuguese Ministry of Culture to work on a project titled “Utopia et Matter” – Utopia and Matter, or material.

He invited me to his studio, and from that point on, I spent a lot of time there, watching him work. I was able to witness the entire process of how his paintings came into being.

Jorge had set up his studio in a bamboo hut on the beach, covered with a thatched roof. The front was completely open – no glass, just open air. Because of the deep overhang of the roof and the lack of windows, it was fairly dark inside – which was a blessing, as the sun usually blazed down from the sky.

Jorge hadn’t brought any materials from Europe; he had arrived with just a backpack. He wanted his work to emerge from whatever he would encounter locally. The first phase of his project was purely research. In his search for canvases, he met an Indian artist who ended up building all his canvases and with whom Jorge exchanged a lot of ideas.

Color, painting, and pigments play an important role in public life in South India. Jorge spent a lot of time walking through the streets, observing people going about their daily routines, always on the lookout for materials and painting techniques for his work.

In front of many houses, you find beautiful drawings made with pigments, drawn in a specific sprinkling technique. They are a sign that the house has been cleaned – completely ordinary, part of daily life. Similarly, windshields of buses, cars, and rickshaws are often adorned with intricate designs; they have been blessed for the journey.

Many women wear a red dot on their third eye and another one at the hairline on the forehead. The one on the third eye is purely decorative, while the one at the hairline signifies that the woman is married and therefore not available. Some men and women have shaved heads and yellow-painted scalps – the result of a Hindu ritual. Some men wear the red Shiva stripe across the forehead.

All these observations found their way into Jorge’s paintings in one way or another – often transformed, stripped of their original function, repurposed. He used temple colors, pigments, henna, stickers, and stamps, as well as the traditional sprinkling technique that women use when the household cleaning is done.

I invite you to take a close look at the paintings and go on a journey of discovery to find these elements.

Many of Jorge’s works depict deities or religious symbols. I myself was deeply moved at the time by the natural and unquestioned presence of spirituality that I observed in Tamil Nadu – and in other parts of India as well. In Europe, we often seem unsure about how to deal with spirituality; I often experience the approach as strained or awkward. Some people even seem to lose their grounding.

In South India, on the other hand, spirituality is the most natural thing in the world. The first question, after “What is your name?”, is often “What is your god?”. Once, I replied that I didn’t have a god. I shouldn’t have said that – you must have a god of some kind. That much was clear from the concerned reaction of the person asking. From then on, I always said I was Christian – which was accepted without hesitation.

That didn’t stop anyone from taking me into temples or placing the red dot on my forehead. I even saw Muslim women in burkas celebrating Christmas in a Christian church – entirely natural, completely everyday.

Looking at Jorge’s paintings, I can see that he, too, was deeply impressed by this ever-present spirituality and the incredible tolerance we were fortunate to experience in South India.

Jorge’s approach – incorporating cultural research, painting techniques, and local materials into his work – makes his paintings incredibly exciting, in my view. I see them as a kind of collage of all the experiences and discoveries he made. In many places, his works clearly bear the marks of that story.

Even though Jorge ordered 90×90 cm square canvases from the painter Gobi, none of them actually had those exact dimensions, and very few had a true right angle. They were the product of real craftsmanship, made with the simplest tools.

All the frames were also made locally – in a small shop that was packed to the ceiling. After we brought the paintings there to be framed, the place was overflowing. To pack the paintings for shipping to Lisbon, we had to use the sidewalk in front of the shop – right in the middle of crowds of pedestrians passing by.

So many of these challenges were part of the painting process itself and are, in a way, essential elements of the work.

Now I’ve told you about South India. But the other works in this exhibition were also created as “traveling art.” Before Jorge decided to set up a permanent studio in Berlin, he worked exclusively through artistic residencies – turning the lack of a studio into a strength.

What strikes me most is how much the context of creation influences his paintings.

And now, I’ve said enough. Enjoy discovering this exhibition!

Christine Hubenthal, Munich 2011