Isa Carrillo: Silent Introspection and Jung's Shadow in the Cabañas

In the mundane lies the divine, and in the divine lies the mundane,
in the most mundane, there can be a divinity.
— Isa Carrillo

Artist Isa Carrillo presents the exhibition The Lake, The Thunder, The Wind at the Cabañas Museum, an exploration of different systems and parameters that delve into human existence; studies that she conceives as a fissure through which other possibilities emerge for understanding.

The exhibition is based on two hexagrams from the I Ching or the Book of Changes: Sui, Adhesion, loyalty, or following: moving within joy, and Ta Kuo: The Preponderance of the Great. The I Ching is pure vitality and poetry. One of the pieces of advice that the second hexagram gives us is that to bring about modifications, "it is necessary to gently untie the knot in the direction of the situation. Proceed with delicacy." Large-format embroidered pieces make up the exhibition; undoubtedly, thousands of knots were tied and untied to create the stitches that provide structure and lines.

There was a time when I hesitated to use the concept of energy, and I suppose it's because we continue dragging the rationalistic aftermath of past centuries. "I think, therefore I am," someone once said. For centuries, we have been dizzyingly led by idea after seemingly ingenious idea emanating from academia and reason to make up language, architecture, culture, and ways of being in the world. But what lies within us apart from these implanted ideas? What do our artists propose/assemble? How does energy move? What is that which is not thought of as an image or word? What can be done if we want to connect with these ineffable forces? Isa has meticulously studied other arts that exist outside of academia: astrology, numerology, chiromancy.

The pieces in the exhibition are crafted with layered textiles; wool and cotton of varying densities, intervened with embroidery and gaps or cutouts, reveal the forms found in the fabrics underneath. Symbolically and synthetically they evoke the four elements, seven energy vortexes, and two hexagrams from the I Ching, accompanied by their equivalents in Mayan glyphs. The intention is for the room to be a silent space that activates that which sleeps in the unconscious.

Next to the entrance is the numerological portrait of Carl Gustav Jung, which the artist embroidered on fabric. I asked her if there is any sign in this numerology that prompted him to analyze dreams and the unconscious, to which she responded: "There is a very strong sign in Jung's numerology, he has all the numbers there, from 1 to 9, he has them all. In his mind or mission, he has the nine, the highest number: altruist, hermit. The number nine is very much tied to the hermit, which is beautiful because it makes space for something else to come, since he has completed and finished the cycle, he has the maturity to step aside and let others take the initiative. The number nine comes with its little lamp, it has already walked, observed, experienced; in its journey it embraced its own light and now shares its wisdom with someone else. Also, he was born with an awareness that perceives the world through intuition. This opened a very different and illogical horizon for him, because he was in contact with other perceptions."

Regarding sacred geometry, Isa considers herself an incipient or amateur practitioner. With humility, she views it as a subject beyond her grasp and admits to being aware that this lifetime won't be enough to study it. I also asked her about the value of silence in her artistic practice, and she said: "With regards to my life, silence is very important. You don't have to do anything to inhabit noise, just by waking up there is already a lot of noise, sounds; there are beauties. Silence is the space for me, and it's very necessary; it's my refuge. Creating with my hands gives me the possibility to connect with internal silence, empty the words in my head, and simply be in the moment, even if the garbage truck is noisily passing by outside or there's music on the stereo. It inspires me a lot to connect with internal silence."

Isa studies numerology from a humanistic approach, which posits that all numbers, their symbols, and experiences are a mission, particularly those found in shadow. The unconscious is something that must be confronted because, as is well said, it's always easier to see the beam, the mistakes, and the flaws in others.

Jung stated that one who looks inward awakens and he dedicated decades to the study of dreams and art therapy, which facilitates the expression and communication of internal aspects that are difficult to verbalize for various reasons.

Our societies don't know how to express what they dream; dazed and using our technologies in an adolescent manner, it seems we don't know how to be in silence and in the presence of things without judging them. Time spent on applications and screens has seeped even into our dreams. The volume of the voice of our inner fascist is very high, and we probably need a pause, initially, to recognize it.

"What are my dreams now?" is one of the questions posed by art; perhaps we will never fully understand them, but asking the question provokes something positive within us. If our work functions like letters we send to each other, as people, then I am delighted to come across Isa in Guadalajara, my locale, and with her eyes that discover magic and beauty in her tao or path.

Borges' poem For a Version of the I King invokes: "But in some corner of your enclosure, there may be a light, a fissure." Fissures that Isa perceives as cracks, rifts, or ruptures in the linear narratives that have been imposed on us for centuries. Cracks from which creative energy emerges.

— Alejandra Arreola

Translated to English by Sebastián Antón-Ojeda