Interview with Susy Gómez: “Social media allow me to break through the violent silence in this tragedy

Text: José Eduardo Iglesias. Palma. Interview with Susy Gómez made on 21 March 2023.

-Coincidences, it is now 20 years since the biennial Art Report 2003, the first exhibition we organised at the Solleric when I was director of Diario de Mallorca and in which you participated in an outstanding way, with a seven-metre metal flower. That exhibition was the most visited in the history of the gallery up to that time.

-Yes, that’s right. In 2003, my intervention at the Solleric was an ode to love. Now I have created a 36-metre mural painting in Es Baluard, a “gesture against oblivion”. Both exhibitions are radically marked by two autobiographical moments, then inspired by the inaugural moment of our love, with Juanan Horrach Moyà, where I created, on scaffolding, a large mural inscription, “t’estim mentres tanc l’aire entre els meus llavis” -I love you as I lock the air between my lips-, which occupied the walls of the room that housed the sculpture of the daisy forged in iron that you mention, fatally different moments in life, now the pain and profound sadness of the death of my partner for 20 years, Juanan Horrach, and the happiness of our love then, coincidences that remind us that Eros and Thanatos are the two forces and constituent principles of life and the universe.

On February 16th, ” Gesture against oblivion” was inaugurated with a large audience, whom I thank for their presence, a cathartic energy was created among all, very much connected with the matrix creative force.

-What has Mallorca brought you since then?

-In these years, Mallorca has given me the gift of love and has immersed me in a journey of spiritual deepening that has led me to train in different therapeutic disciplines in order to make visible and to listen to the invisible ties that move our lives, to gain emotional awareness and to apply it in my artistic practice. It has reconnected me with the matrixial, creative energy, where to recover plasticity in the patterns of life within the transgenerational context of one’s own family, a reflection of what it means to be a woman within the artistic context, how we are seen within the family, to see what place that feminine energy occupies in the particular and the collective. This liberation makes us less manipulable and predictable. One of the purposes of art is to liberate the human soul.

-Do you always return to the island, no matter how much you travel?

-The journey in my life is part of an energy that vibrates within my family. My grandparents were seafarers; my great-grandfather travelled between Barcelona, Havana and New York. The visitors who came to Cala Sant Vicenç at the end of the 19th century were artists and intellectuals from different countries around the world, attracted by the landscape, with its strong chromatic changes, and by the energy of the cove. They came to the family home, which ended up being a hotel that still belongs to the family. The idea of travel is in that family energy.

The artist Susy Gómez, during the interview. Photo: Pep Caparrós.

-The energy of the wild landscape of the Tramuntana.

-The Tramuntana has a very special energy, for me it is the first landscape of my life, in Cala Sant Vicenç, the Serra has something animic, it is like a being that breathes. The serrated end of the Cavall Bernat is a poetically organic screen because it has a chromaticism that goes a little beyond the mineral. It led me to ask myself what was behind things and, later, what is behind the intimate world. From a very early age I felt that what is essential cannot be seen, in this case the sun, we only see its effects on the rocks; it led me to consider the landscape as a place that detonates within us ways of moving in the world.

-“Gesture against oblivion”, your exhibition at Es Baluard: What must we not forget?

-The laws of the soul dictate that remembering is a movement towards the heart, in the heart there is no past, present or future, the invisible does not disappear, it continues to beat. This beating has been the source of the strength to take on this titanic test that this project in Es Baluard has been for me, from the maximum emotional vulnerability of grief. I can only thank each and every one of those who have accompanied me in this process for being there close by to support me in memory of Juanan Horrach. These paintings were born in my studio in Campos; we found that place after searching for years with Juanan where to establish my studio; I felt that a special energy emanated from that place, I intuited what was later shown with the new Quantum paintings that were exhibited in June 2022, in what used to be the Horrach Moyà Sadrassana Gallery. Inma Prieto, director and curator of the exhibition “Gesture against oblivion”, which can be seen until 4 June, challenged me to take them to an immersive work in Es Baluard, a way of transcending the lived experience.

-Is the fact of making your grief over the death of your partner explicit in social media a gesture against oblivion?

-Of course, the social media are a bridge between the intimate and the public, they allow us to connect the intimate worlds between people and to go beyond the violent and unexpected silence that I have been and am living through this tragedy, thus expressing my resounding resistance to forgetting Juanan Horrach’s legacy, in which during these 20 years of his professional career we were accomplices in every step of our respective projects, which are based on our way of living the unconditional love we have for each other and our way of thinking, not only accomplices but fighters. Now through the networks I can express that I continue the fight alone but guided by his trail of light and inspiration that he himself transmitted to me in these two decades in possible situations such as these.

-Mallorca registers a remarkable activity around art. Does it occupy a place on the national and international scene?

-There could always be more activity around contemporary art. The place it occupies is not the place it should occupy. To put Mallorca on the map, a stronger cultural commitment is needed. Institutional, social and political support is unquestionably necessary. I would like to open this final part with an idea for the future as a tribute to the artists who work from the insularity.

-Are you comfortable in this hyper-touristy Mallorca of the 21st century?

-It is clear that this overcrowded Mallorca needs to be ordered, we must not forget that Mallorca is made by all of us and this is the Mallorca we have. Although I am reluctant to place the responsibility always on the same people and to move in a paternalistic life of complaining about who is in charge. I believe that Mallorca, like so many other places on the planet, the very democratisation of travel means that everyone has the right to go everywhere. We have this tendency to complain that too many people visit us, we Mallorcans also travel a lot and those where we go will probably see us as tourists. The Mallorca of the 21st century shows the world we are building together. These measures that should be taken are compatible with individual responsibility. Everyone should reflect and see if travelling comes from within or if it is just a social gesture. The island speaks volumes about how the world moves today, but, of course, we move the world.