Ey!Studio AiR residency
Begonya Garcia
During her stay at the Ey!Studio AiR residency, the Brazilian artist Veridiana Leite danced in many ways, not only with her body, but also with gestures, eyes and her way of composing. Starting from the bond that she has with dance as a former professional ballerina, as if it’s about a choreography, the artist carried out small sketches like rehearsals that allowed her to enter the stage, in this case the blank canvas, and to start composing, at the same time, different interconnected paintings that have always been visible throughout the whole work process, creating layers of information, textures and narratives that connected her to the past. It’s the first time that Veridiana Leita incorporates dance in her paintings, carrying out a trip back to her teenage self, and in a cyclic temporality appear her yearnings, memories and colors that seem to never have been left behind. From the self-portraits that she made while dancing, she incorporated the fragmented body in movement, the rhythm, adding even more gestural freedom to her painting, recreating that feeling that can only be experienced while dancing, when body and mind simply connect to exist at that precise moment, as a meditative action. Observing attentively Veridiana Leite’s painting is like getting into a thousand and one landscapes, amidst nostalgia, memories and feelings, finding out details of a particular iconography that the artist has been working on for a long time, creating a personal language to which now dance is added. “I want to die while dancing” was what a Spanish artist told Veridiana Leite during a party in Madrid and that, if you pay attention, you will find written in one of her works, a statement that the artist brings back home.