VIEWING ROOM "Ophelia"

Ophelia

Ophelia is in some ways such a stereotypical symbol that attempting to present yet another version out of thousands can be dangerous and pretentious... besides being a female character who transcends through her death and as a corpse.

In 2004, I saw Millais' painting "Ophelia" for the first time in London. It is one of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings I like the most, and seeing it live motivated my desire to work on my own version, which I began planning in 2013. But reinterpreting such a widely used and versioned icon by various media, like the character of Ophelia from the work Hamlet, raised doubts for me because in those years I resisted using such a recognizable character so directly without practically modifying their aesthetic discourse.

For me, the idea of my own narratives was the creation of figures authentically authored by me... As the years passed, I modified my criterion, mainly because I concluded that it was limiting or absurd to deprive myself of the possibility of reinterpreting everything that has captured my attention and added to my identity throughout my life.

As a reflection, I consider that our creativity daily receives an innumerable diversification of artistic proposals from other creators as inspiration. All this information offered to us by the various media—be it literature, cinema, history, sciences, art, and creativity in general in its multiplicity of possibilities—definitively influences our vision, however original we try to appear. Freeing oneself from prejudices that can limit one's own creation is an important step in an artist's maturation process, which is why today I have no problem painting my versions of historical ideas or icons.

"Nihil novum sub sole (There is nothing new under the sun)..."

Even so, I needed my reinterpretation of Ophelia to focus on another narrative direction that did not involve a Romanized aesthetic language; instead, I wanted to frame my story around an extremely delicate topic in Mexico during those years: the tragedy of missing women in Ciudad Juárez. I had no opportunistic intention of creating a social or political outcry; I only wanted to represent a fact itself about one of the many faces and identities of the concept of death... about its emptiness.

"When you kill a man, you take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." (Unforgiven, 1992, Clint Eastwood)

From the beginning, I was very clear that my Ophelia—to name her somehow and relate her to the icon—should actually and specifically be the discovery of a dead woman found on the banks of a stream or drain. The body, which has not yet been removed from the scene, should present the disturbed appearance of a recent, disheveled corpse undergoing the corresponding investigations by the police and forensic experts; therefore, the scene should also show some kind of sign of that chain of custody at some edge of the painting.

In a realistic painting, every existing element is fundamental to its reading and interpretation; composing a scene with a coherent narrative is a complex task of composition.

The flowers and their powerful allegorical capacity also had to be included, not only because of Shakespeare's original mention in the story and the highly varied presence of these in the Millais painting that inspired me, but because flowers were necessary as a symbol of the fragility of life as vanitas among so many other interpretations that, according to contemporary critics, turn this element into just a discredited, archaic, or kitschy ornament... delusionally. The perfect and protagonist plant for my painting would be the oleander, a Mediterranean shrub whose flowers and leaves are toxic and poisonous.

In 2013, I conducted the photo session with Julia, the model who posed for this character... I dug a ditch in my garden, improvising a small pit with plastic, which I filled with water, oleander branches, and soil. We spent an entire morning trying to reproduce the character's role in every shot I needed, and I finally achieved it, not without a slight cold from the model's superb collaboration to represent a corpse—which fortunately was just an anecdote of no great importance compared to the dramatic end that befell the model for the master Millais...

A project that is still waiting to be realized...

I have painted two preparatory exercises in small formats as sketches, but they do not reflect the characteristics described above that I intend for this project, which is still unmade.

In 2017, the architect José Manuel Infiesta asked me for a new painting for the MEAM, and I told him about this project, which he accepted for the museum... Unfortunately, with the architect's death, the commission was canceled and remains pending a new collector who values the idea exactly as it is.

We are talking about a large, horizontal painting that shows that lying body, whose characteristics and theme are not necessarily commercial or pleasant...

This first exercise, which I titled Ophelia (2015), in no way contains that complex burden on the subject that I need to express; on the contrary, this painting, done on a 56 x 90 centimeter panel...

...rather reflects the serenity of the character in contact with the water of the pond and the rhythms of the poisonous oleanders that are her bed…

–Edgar Mendoza