In aparición, pétalo y lengua, the Venezuelan artist Valentina Alvarado Matos recounts, in a fragmented manner, a dream of her mother, Mila. The filmic performance, on a dual screen with live sound, is constructed here and now, yet it invokes a landscape that the filmmaker inhabits from the diaspora and which is reclaimed, with variations, throughout her work. ‘A world appears,’ asserts Alvarado Matos. A world appears. In the dream, Mila bites clouds. In the film, she bathes in the courtyard of her home with water collected from a green that ‘is a mixture of guayacán blue and guava yellow.’ Maternal and filial relationships are set in different scenarios that act as spaces of memory, affection or mourning. ‘A world appears’ among memories, colours, gestures and words, evoking a bond marked by physical distance, which the piece seeks to shorten. The sensuality of the images

Maria Pipla for XCéntric