Severo Sarduy (1937-1993) was one of the most important Cuban writers of the 20th century and one of the representative figures of the Latin American neo-baroque. In 1973 he wrote «Big Bang», a work composed of seventeen literary pieces. In them two types of texts coexist: the scientific and the poetic. In the latter, Sarduy uses astronomical terms as metaphors to induce poetic eroticism.
The purpose of the «Big Crunch» project is to interpret the pieces of «Big Bang» through photography. Each of the seventeen images that make it up is inspired by a piece from «Big Bang». The photographs capture small drops of oil poured into water, illuminated with polychromatic light and photographed with a macro lens. The choice of these fluids is intentional, with the purpose of generating circular or elliptical figures. Both forms suggest celestial bodies and are present in the collection of poems by Severo Sarduy, who uses geometry to create poetic spaces. Each photograph is accompanied by the title and the fragment of the «Big Bang» piece that inspired it, both in quotes.
The first piece is the origin: «The universe swells / We witness the result of a gigantic explosion»; the subsequent pieces serve as a transition towards the final literary piece, which describes an ending: «Time has ended / go back to sleep». In a personal interpretation, the sequence simulates a cosmic cycle that begins with a big bang and ends with a big crunch, a cosmological theory in which the universe, after a period of expansion, contracts upon itself to begin another cycle with a new big bang.
«Big Bang imaginado»
Yila'ob Centro Cultural Digital
Xalapa (Veracruz-Llave, Mexico)
From 20/11/2023 to 10/12/2023
«Badajoz City Awards 2022»
Museo Luis de Morales
Badajoz (Spain)
From 11/11/2022 to 22/11/2022