Bestiary of the hidden garden: Raquel Schembri

Immanent or what remains

We can believe that context shapes artists in the same way that artists transform the perception of contexts. It would be correct to think that this is one of the most interesting cultural dialectics to study philosophically. Raquel Schembri is at the heart of a generation of artists who are still there, building and being shaped by the current imaginary. However, she is no longer with us; her trajectory was suddenly interrupted by an accident. The mystery of the arts is fascinating, in which a work gains autonomy and continues to mature, influencing the context and, in doing so, dialoguing with its generation. Today, eight years after her passing, her work is reconfigured and continues to gain relevance, sensitizing the world and creating new imaginaries.

Raquel explored, in a very unique way, how to perform the construction of images. In her work, she developed a complex sensitivity, capable of presenting extremely original images in a direct way. Her style is unique and deeply reflects her sharp personality connected to the sensitivity of the context. She was never an artist exclusively in the studio; Despite working daily in her creative space, she was an artist of social interactions. Strongly influenced by the situationists, she created a very particular way of giving an extremely powerful visuality as a response to being in the world.

For her, performing was the starting point of the gaze. An artisan of listening and a sharp artist of images, she left us an exciting legacy that grows and pulsates as the world becomes more complex with increasingly empty images, while gazes turn attentively to the vertical dive, possible only in the visual arts.

In this small exhibition, we bring to the public a series of works in acrylic on paper that inhabit an “in-between”: between representation and gesture, the eye and the gaze, the material and the spiritual. In this series presented, there is, fundamentally, a scopic dialectic whose strength lies in what precedes the gesture and in the very expression of the gesture on the surface. In this sense, the work dares to amalgamate the abyss of what apparently inhabits what we are calling here “in-between”. We can say that the chosen works effectively deal with a kind of bestiary of apparitions.

The artist used to say that this series was the bright pulse of the secret life around us. I imagine that this is why she used bright, even somewhat unusual, colors to create a mysterious fauna and flora that combine the fantasy of a gaze in search of naturalism with the dance of a body that paints on the surface with the strength of a ritualized surrender.

In this exhibition, we have the privilege of appreciating a work belonging to the artist's latest series. In this phase, she explores large dimensions on paper, using a rich diversity of materials, such as charcoal, acrylic, graphite and oil stick. The series reveals, in a forceful way, the power of her fluid and dancing gesture, in addition to highlighting her extraordinary ability to materialize, with intensity and sensitivity, her total dedication to artistic practice.

We can say that her images constantly influence her peers and fellow artists. Its power bubbles up, reaffirming that, in a world full of images, there are those that are exceptional images: capable of pushing the edges of what we believe is possible to see, leading us to see something that, mysteriously, was hidden, even though it was clearly before our eyes.

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Raquel Schembri passed away on June 27, 2016, during the birth of her daughter, Marta. Throughout her career, she held artistic residencies in England, Germany, Serbia, Brazil and South Korea. She participated in solo and group exhibitions in different countries, with emphasis on Germany and South Korea. Her legacy is vast and continues to reconfigure itself, proving to be more current than ever.