Claudia Polanco

RED

2020

As I navigate this world in a crucial transitional time, I have once more found myself surrounded by the color red, the color that accompanied me in my dreams, night after night, throughout my childhood.

I spoke about this dream, thinking it was not very deep or meaningful, therefore, inconsequential. I was wrong. I became aware of the constant and sometimes overwhelmingly insistent presence of this color in my life. It’s the color of blood, passion, pain and life. It appeared in my research as I learned of Louise Bourgeois’s Red Room, and in the red blood- like notes from my children. I realized that I own many red lipsticks that I always wipe off before stepping out.

I came across an ordinary plastic vessel with the remains of bright red tincture, as basic as it gets. The final piece of my life has yet to be created, I find myself to be in the basic stages of my awakening, I am like that nearly empty vessel, with so much room and potential, and a pinch of a powerful primary color ready to be converted into something; being born from something with so much strength, being born from red.