Entre Dos Aguas (Between Two Waters)

Tinged with romance, nostalgia and longing, Jorge Mayet’s delicate existential sculptures visualise lost worlds. As a Cuban exile living in Mallorca, he constructs lifelike trees and other organic forms from wire and papier mâché, evoking the geographic terrain of his distant homeland. In Entre Dos Aguas, a tree stretches on elongated roots between two floating islands. Suspended perilously above the abyss between, the tree figures Mayet’s own sense of dislocation. He yearns for a wholeness that has been lost in what he perceives to be the decay of history in today’s society. Yet Mayet also takes the tree as a symbolic icon capable of withstanding such conditions: Cuba’s trees are associated with a deep tradition of mysticism, which comes from links with the Yorubic religion brought over by African slaves. In totemic works like Cuando Más Pienso En Ti, Mayet refers to the rituals in in which people prayed before the trees, burying offerings in and around their roots. A black tree rooted as firmly in historical and religious symbolism as it is rooted in the earth, it speaks of the importance and power of remembering our origins. ‘Maybe, subconsciously, I live like a tree pulled from its roots and in that way my installations are a metaphor for my life,’ he says, ‘but on a conscious level, I believe that we have to value each part of this Earth that belongs to us, because it is from she that we are able to live’.