Page 49 - Nada temas, dice ella

they reflect the economic conditions of the moment they were produced and how they praise or undermine the ideological codes of each period. It is also their responsibility to show how the renewal of artistic languages opens up new paths towards the comprehen- sion of existence, as art, like science and technique, enables a hermeneutics that discovers new ways of seeing, understanding and doing. By revealing the transversality of languages and symbols (as Aby Warburg and many others had previously done) iconolog- ical interpretations show that there is a common anthropological substratum in the creations of different cultures.
Since the early twentieth century, exhibitions have been an efficient me- dium for communicating reflections on all types of subjects. Works of art are syntactically arranged in museum structures specifically conceived for the purpose; in churches, palaces or industrial spaces; in squares and pub- lic parks; and even in unusual places like hotel rooms or planes, thereby extending the field of action of artists to non-traditional spaces. Exhibitions have certainly become a part of the culture of spectacle, particularly in the West, but when they are articulat- ed from critical awareness, from truth and respect for the spectator, they are a wonderful exercise in the production of knowledge and symbolic exchange, an excellent way of favouring aesthetic and political dialogue. At the onset
of the third millennium, the utopian values of the French Revolution – lib- erty, equality, fraternity – need to be revisited from new post-colonial and gender perspectives. This is particu- larly relevant for daughters, mothers and grandmothers in all continents, who defend, like Teresa herself, the freedom of becoming women.
For all these reasons, when it came to finding a title for the show I chose to simplify one of her poems. Her verse ‘Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you,’ filled with sixteenth- century resonances, was transformed into the simpler and more contempo- rary ‘Fear nothing’ that subtly arouses the courage required for living, for destroying earlier schemes and explor- ing new paths. In connection with
a fragment from the title of the book Détruire, dit-elle (1969) by another female writer, Marguerite Duras, a woman who also suffered a great deal for love, it assumed its full mean-
ing. Maurice Blanchot declared that the word destroy is like a light in our hearts, a sudden secret with which we have been entrusted so we may move towards a future that is not separate from the present. By omitting ‘destroy’ and stressing ‘she says’, it becomes crystal clear that the invitation to lose our fear, to welcome transformation and to ‘destroy’ that which we no longer need is made by a woman.
The figure and the work of Saint Teresa of Jesus are rooted in the
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