AITOR SARAIBA

How to explain the things I draw

I tattooed the words “Beside you” on my skin as a tribute to Lola Flores, as a tribute to passion and pain, as a tribute to love and sadness, to drama and everything that has no solution at all. Somehow, since I can draw better than I can write, I have always felt attracted to “folclóricas” [heart-rending traditional Spanish flamenco-like singers and performers]. All folclóricas in general, even those who don’t know that they are. Like my sister and grandmother, who inspire me with their sighs for the past and prayers for the future, without ever thinking about the present - and all other big divas who have bordered, enacted, forced and surpassed femininity and transvestism.

All such melodrama is not anything but a set of films, songs, celebrities, books, photographs… ranging from Romeo and Juliet, passing through the soppiness that sometimes seduces me in the purest Isabel Coixet style, the songs of love and regret written by Nacho Canut over 25 years, Amy Winehouse, Bambi, porno movies, men, zoos with their animals that have anaesthetized and lost-looking eyes… rabbits, deer, wild boars, pigs, sows, dogs and my father.

Yes, all these are the things driving me to draw the way I do.

“It happened once, it is not quite clear if it was because of some hunters who didn’t believe in love anymore or if they were hunters who were all in love with each other, or if they had a broken heart for some brazen mermaid.
What we do know is that for some time men tried to survive in an idyllic way in a forest of some remote place.
Their fears and grudges remained there. Also some cannibalism. Also some sadistic spots that spattered about.
The trees in this place are still untouched. Lakes and rivers, crystal-clear and pure, still remain, and nothing seems changed at first sight. Flora, stones, climate, everything is untouched by change as yet.
It’s the animals. They are the ones going rotted. They have got humanised, and reproduce to perfection the weaknesses of the men they emulated and who sowed seeds all around.”

“By scraps and bits I’ve in the past surrendered myself to strangers - men who disappeared down the gangplank, got off at the next station: put together, maybe they would’ve made the one person in the world - but there he is with a dozen different faces moving down a hundred separate streets. This is my chance to find that man - you are him (…), all of you.”
"The Grass Harp", Truman Capote.

“-Mummy!- called out Bambi in the middle of the snow-covered forest. -Mummy! Where are you?-.
He looked desperately among the trees, but he didn’t see her anywhere. He stopped to listen, anxious to hear her voice calling him, but only the hiss of the wind came through the tree branches. And, at that moment, Bambi understood that now he was alone.”
"Bambi", W. Disney.

Aitor Saraiba. Madrid, febrero 2008.