As a visual artist who works outside of Ecuador, the theme that I have been developing for several years is related to my experience as a migrant, for this reason, identity, otherness and the fragility of the human being are recurring themes in my work. However, the metaphorical perspective of the body, identity and violence represented in my work with solitary and isolated images, in the Artist's Book, find a rethinking of the context and shed the sense of loneliness and isolation. This is because the artist's book offers my work the possibility of developing a narrative that dialogues with all the parts of the book, that is, with the type of paper, the mobile typography used, the folding and types of stitching that the codex and the binding offer, within a harmonious coherence. So the book becomes a complete object.
The vulnerability and loneliness of the images are integrated and cohabit in the artist's book, with a contingent of coherence from the woodcut wound, which, to manifest itself, must, unlike drawing on paper, follow a double path. First, that of the cut or incision. And, secondly, that of inking and printing.
As an engraver, I trace, cut, iron, draw with carving and with the gesture of the hand, while reproducing the outline of the object I intend to represent. In this way, I transfer part of my universe to a new universe, the book.
The void produced by the white background of the paper can be accused of containing, paradoxically, nothingness. However, as an engraver, the wound is the absence of matter, but the presence of an image. Feeling the presence of the image means moving away from oblivion, moving forward, in an approximation by virtue of each stroke towards memory and amazement, an event that interprets from the void everything that we have lost. Making a book from graphics is, at the same time, making a self-portrait.