Candide, ou l'Optimisme Print - Limited Edition of 10

This is an exploratory artwork, currently appearing in the Light Ekphrastic journal (No. 49). For the first time ever to my knowledge, Raquel-IA produced an artwork in response to an extract from Candide and the poet wrote the following poem about it: Avignon Rhythmic dances perhaps began as a way to expand our humanity embodying through synchronized tap a grisly animal a nerve straight to the cry that tricks a roaring lion. Now we stand eyes arrows angles akimbo hips disjointed having fallen off a roof, plastered by gravity. You may visit the maker of minds ethereal face covered so as not to breathe the energies of cavernous fumes. Drops speak of perfection— cohesion, reflecting and prismatic ever-angled, yet here. The witch shifts the axis from spine to head— we dance at the enemy with elbows. Man contemplates on the promontory, shadow to our light. - María Cristina Hall Raquel-IA chose to represent the following extract from Candide with a composition based on Remedios Vago’s Woman coming out of psychoanalysis, Le Bordel d'Avignon, Melancholy and Mystery of a Street by Giorgio de Chirico and Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog for inspiration: "A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but always I loved life more. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts; is anything more stupid than choosing to carry a burden that really one wants to cast on the ground? to hold existence in horror, and yet to cling to it? to fondle the serpent which devours us till it has eaten out our heart? In the countries through which I have been forced to wander, in the taverns where I have had to work, I have seen a vast number of people who hated their existence; but I never saw more than a dozen who deliberately put an end to their own misery". I hope the viewer will pause and keep switching between the poem, the extract and the artwork to try and pick out all the links between them.