On Friday, 5th September at 19:00, we will inaugurate the season with “La Cura”, the first solo exhibition by artist Cristina Temes (Tenerife, 1969) at the BIBLI Gallery.
Artistic Exploration of Memory
Cristina Temes Cordovez immerses us in an intimate and obsessive preservation exercise, wherein a complete courtyard—with its house, trees, and everyday objects—remains suspended in time. Through a meticulous process involving layers of wet cardboard, dried flowers, and hollowed-out bark, the artist freezes her living space, transforming the ordinary into a territory of memory.
Temes Cordovez’s work is characterised by this exploration of intimate spaces as containers of emotions and memories. In “La Cura”, the actions of wetting, moulding, and drying become a powerful metaphor for the passage of time and its capacity to transform all it touches. What was once a dwelling now transforms into a non-place, an intermediate space between memory and decay, between what was and what will never be.
Material Significance
The choice of cardboard as the primary material is no accident. Its apparent fragility contrasts with its resilience, creating a tension that perfectly reflects the ambiguous nature of the project. The title itself plays with this duality: on one hand, it refers to the technical process of drying and preservation; on the other, it suggests healing, a reconciliation with the passage of time and the inevitable transformation of the spaces that have sheltered us.
The pieces that compose the installation act as emotional fossils. They are not mere reproductions of objects, but testimonies of a present that resists fading away. In these works, the domestic attains the status of a relic, transforming into a vehicle of memory.
Video Installation
This narrative expands with a video installation in which the artist and her daughter engage in a shared ritual. The child throws flamboyant flowers from the top of a ladder, creating an image in which both figures become alter egos, energising each other in a dance of emotional inheritance. Mother and daughter appear united by that immutable time, with one embodying the trace of the other in a gesture that transcends generations, turning the act of remembering into a vibrant legacy.
Concept of Impretérito
“La Cura” does not speak of the past or the future, but rather of that suspended time the artist refers to as impretérito: that which has ceased to be yet insists on remaining. Like a courtyard that will no longer be a home but continues to be a refuge. Like a mark that, no longer a wound, endures as a scar. In this work, Temes Cordovez offers us a material elegy for that which is in the process of disappearing but, through art, finds a means of permanence.
Alejandra Galo.
CRISTINA TEMES
(Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1969).
With a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Valencia, she has furthered her education through various workshops led by artists such as Juan Hidalgo. Her work addresses reality and existence through a lens of uncertainty, often employing resources close to a conceptual and pop aesthetic to create installations with multiple procedures.
Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the CajaCanarias Art and Culture Hall (La Laguna, 1998), Círculo de Bellas Artes (S. C. de Tenerife, 2003), Ateneo de La Laguna (La Laguna, 2005), and the Contemporary Art Hall (S. C. de Tenerife, 2010), as well as in group exhibitions at Sala Parpalló (Valencia, 1993), La Regenta Art Centre (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1998 and 2019), Galería Cruce (Madrid, 1998), Pabellón Villanueva (Madrid, 2003), Instituto Cabrera Pinto (Tenerife, 2007), Juan Francisco Manzano Hall of UNEAC (Matanzas-Cuba, 2008), and San Martín Centre for Contemporary Culture-CAAM (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2017).
