Marisa Culatto

LOST IN TRANSLATION

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My relationship with the UK goes back to my childhood, as part of my family is British. I was born in the Canary Islands and, therefore, a Spanish national. Nevertheless, I have been moving between both countries my whole life, able to live and work here or there as I pleased. My partner is British and we have two bilingual and bicultural children. I am almost completely blended into the socio-cultural tissue of this country. But there is a last area of this culture that I am unable to penetrate: Cricket! It doesn’t matter how many times the rules are explained to my, I just don’t seem to be able to grasp them.

But then came Brexit… and a Pandora’s Box of emotions was unleashed. I feel rejected and bereaved… And angry and resentful too. My response to all this has been this body of work in which a number of Cricket players pose dressed in their “whites” – their traditional clothes for playing – but holding an incongruous object: plausible but unidentifiable. They are inspired on the very English Tudor portraits in which some symbolic objects were incorporated into the painting holding some clues and meanings related to the person portrayed. At the time these were understood only by a few – those they were intended for – but are completely incomprehensible for the average contemporary viewer.

At a deeper level, the work symbolises my current personal situation within a very unstable time caught between two cultures and two political situations.