La maison ou le pouvoir de rentrer en soi-même (2012)
La maison est-elle le reflet de notre personnalité qui se construit peu à peu au fil des ans ? Qui construit et protège l'autre ?
Because it is inseparably material and immaterial—both the house we live in and the house we carry deep within ourselves—the home inhabits us as much as we inhabit it. That is why losing it also means losing oneself: being locked outside and outside oneself, in exile, deprived of an intimate living space and of the power to return within, separated from self and others like a ghost haunted by the vanished home.
An old traditional tale teaches us that, thanks to our work and provided we are prudent, we will have nothing to fear for the household’s safety, because we will wisely choose between the straw house and the cement house—able to withstand the wolf’s breath, which can easily blow away the straw house and shake the wooden house until it collapses. But the wolf has become a far more troubling symbol of the dangers threatening our homes. What kind of house can protect us unfailingly from the storms sweeping our world—storms that, financially, drive entire populations into ruin? The tale does not say.
On the thread that links all the houses of the world, a fragile silhouette advances—stubbornly, wavering. Could it be a tightrope-walking hidalgo, kept from falling by the strength of a noble, generous ideal, pushed to go forward against all odds? From house to house, is he seeking an open door to another world where every home is the center of the universe and none will ever be destroyed? We all walk on a thread and, from up there, if we look closely—if we look leaning out of the window of the heart—
Germinal Arcal Palacio
“(…) all houses appear like beautifully colored boat hulls on the immense blue sea of the universe. Fragile, with small triangular sails and a mast pointed toward the sky, they speak at once of our confinement and our lightness, our gravity and our vanity.”
