MARISABEL ARIAS
Susi (perfectly together)
11/11 - 02/12/2022
Susi, is a handcrafted research on the origin of the heart shape, the manner in which it relates to the real heart, and the romantic connotations about it. Susi can be read as a brand of adornments to proclaim romantic love.
« First, I cut a piece of steel closest to the heart shape using a machine similar to an electric saw. Then with the grinder, I gave it the final form of an industrial heart. After that, I used the die casting gun and started to melt the heart until it was as melted and burned as possible. I melted it until I saw it was about to lose all its shape. Then, when the melted heart is still burning, I take a hammer and hit it until it is engraved and the blow of the hammer is visually evident. Then, I submerged it in water using tongs so as not to burn my skin since it continued burning (...)
When I burnt the heart, I asked myself why I made the heart disintegrate. I might as well buy industrial hearts. But something happens in my thought process when these hearts are handmade. Something that I still do not understand, but something I know I must do to understand the commercial component of the form and shape of the heart and, at the same time, know how I am related to it through affective experiences and emotions. Maybe I am trying to understand what it means to be heartbroken physically. (...)
The origin of the heart shape seems to have started in Greek civilisation, in the extinct town of Cyrene. The town’s currency used the symbol we know today as the heart. That symbol was known as the silphium seed. I found on the internet that the heart symbol comes from a very commercial seed of that town; it also worked very well as a contraceptive method. Maybe that heart shape and its sexual properties are where the idea of love was born.
Other first images of the heart also appeared in the epistles of Christine de Pizán (XVC). In her work, Othea’s epistles, a collection of allegories, show a series of men and women who offer their hearts to Venus as an allegory of love. De Pizán’s heart is one of my favourite images of the organ, the symbolisation of love through the surrender of the heart to Venus. The kind, the cute, and the concept of giving underlies this romantic symbolism. Christine de Pizán was the first professional woman writer of the Middle Ages (...) »
This text belongs to Susi short essay-poster that you can read here
