Luis Elvira – Nature, Mapped
I am a Spanish poet and painter born in Madrid, I have lived in London since 2008. I am currently writing poetry both in English and Spanish. I am also the poetry coordinator for Ventana Latina; a cultural magazine made by Latin Americans and Spanish living in the UK.
As a painter my practice deals with using different surfaces, I paint onto doors, fridges, rolls of wallpaper, old maps. I like to give those things a new context where they become an essential part of the work.
I paint and write because when I was at university doing my BA philosophy some of the subjects were about aesthetic and theory of art, but I wanted to do things instead of analysing what others were doing.
My practice is related to nature as I am trying to show images of animals within an alien context using maps of cities as their background. I try to show how we are nowadays increasing the gap between ourselves, a contemporary digital society, and Nature.
Nature is our origin, it is where we are coming from, but we are becoming forgetful about it. I love mountains, especially in wintertime, I think flowers are a gift, I love birds also. But I feel, and this applies to myself as a London citizen, we are getting disconnected from nature, we are making that link thinner.
I wanted to be part of this issue of Wake up screaming because I think it´s good to have a positive approach to different subjects through art. Even if you want to raise the alarm or warning people about some situation it is possible to do it from a “love” or “take care of this” perspective.
Luis Elvira – Mackerel
