Illustrating Stories -
Exhibition at Stir Café
until 31st October 2024
(Chesterton Road, Cambridge UK)
Stories make our imagination fly. They take us on a ride to a place where everything is possible, time stops and the limits are those of our (flying) imagination.This exhibition is about illustrating stories, all kinds of stories: some unknown, some brand new, some told so many times they’ve become myth, some ever to be retold.​​
Welcome.
At the end of the story of the Little Mermaid, the protagonist is often portrayed heart-broken and longing for the human love she had given her happy mermaid life for.
But what if the prince had realised the sacrifices the mermaid had made for him?
What if he had chosen to sacrifice his life as well so they could be equals?
​​Cuenta la leyenda que hubo una vez una civilización en el sur de la península ibérica que guardaba, sin compartirlos, los secretos del universo. En la mitología de dicha civilización, Ea, la diosa de los mares, creó el mundo soplando con su aliento divino sobre la espuma de las olas y haciendo así nacer cada una de las esferas que envuelven la realidad que conocemos. Al ver que los sabios de esta civilización guardaban para sí la llave del misterio de la vida, fue la misma Ea la que acabó engullendo a todos sus habitantes, poniendo fin a la mitología que un día le diera la vida.
Legend has it that there was once a civilisation in the south of the Iberian peninsula that guarded the secrets of the universe, without sharing them. In the myths of that civilisation, Ea, the goddess of the seas, created the world by breathing her divine breath upon the foam of the waves thus giving birth to each of the spheres which enclose the reality that we know. On seeing that they had kept the key to life’s mystery to themselves, Ea herself engulfed all the inhabitants of that civilisation, thus ending the mythology that had brought her to life.
We all know how the story of Red Riding Hood goes… the wolf wants to eat the little girl and she is unsurprisingly scared of the wolf.
But what if somehow the little girl had mustered up the courage to confront the wolf with an act of kindness?
How would that have changed the story?
There is no story here. Just a giraffe preparing breakfast. She’s got the radio on and they are not saying very nice things about the state of the world.
Apparently, basic things like wheat flour are expected to become scarce. Her first thought was ‘Oh no! What am I going to cook pancakes with?’ And she feels guilty that that was the first thing that crossed her mind in the midst of all the terrible things happening.
She feels guilty and she wants to do something about it…
(Maybe there was a story here after all.)
