La Jornada newspaper
Monday, August 30, 2021, p. 8a
Being born with cerebral palsy is a condition that the artist María del Carmen Hernández Covarrubias assumes naturally, known as Carmina Hernández, of whom the exhibition The gesture and the footprint, synthesis of her graphic poetry through 59 works made in the most recent five years.
“My life has been normal. Cerebral palsy is part of my normalcy. What yes, is that my work is a little slower and that my lines have certain movement, something that I consider beautiful. I like that movement in my strokes, because they are the result of my body. Although something very important to me is that I don't try to see myself in my work, but rather that others see themselves in it ”, he explains.
Born in 1961 in Mexico City, Carmina Hernández is a recorder and poet, universes that come together naturally in her work. In recent years she has also dabbled in embroidery, as another support for her creativity, although it is a practice that she assumes more as a way of meditating.
He has also done painting, but he prefers to concentrate on the woodcut, because of the surprises and magic that this technique contains. In addition to being convinced of that saying about which much covers, little presses.
Graduated from the National School of Plastic Arts (ENAP) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), today the Faculty of Arts and Design, her artistic work must also be added to her interest and work in teaching and activism in favor of the inclusion of people with disabilities.
Aspects that he exercises as a workshop leader in Piña Palmera AC, an organization based in Zipolite, Oaxaca, and interference in other parts of the Republic, which works with people with disabilities in rural and indigenous communities.
In an interview, the poet and engraver tells that art was not a choice in her life, but an irreplaceable encounter: “I didn't choose him, he caught me. When I realized it, it was already there. As a child, like all children, she drew, although she did it a little more, because she could not run or climb trees.
“Growing up, many told me to continue down that path, but I wanted to be a psychologist; in the end, art won. My encounter with woodcut was also magical. It happened at ENAP, when the painter Pedro Ascencio invited me to the workshops after seeing my drawings. I went only because I liked Pedro; the woodcut did not attract my attention; it never crossed my mind that it was going to be my life. "
Having opted for engraving has to do with his taste for "taking more than putting on", in addition to considering that through this discipline he can express himself in a more direct, more primitive way.
One of the main characteristics of the work of this artist is the exploration of the human body, a theme for which she opted from assuming that it is the element through which people perceive the environment.
“It is the most basic thing we have, there is nothing that is not perceived through it; We cannot live without being in the body and we live the world through it ”, he explains.
“I am particularly interested in the naked body, because I take it as a metaphor of not covering anything, of showing ourselves as we are. It is a metaphor for both the internal and external parts, because there can be no soul without skin. "
Carmina Hernández's interest in teaching began since she finished her university studies and became a teacher in a special education school, where she noticed that neither teachers nor parents know how to treat children with disabilities. Given this, he decided to design special workshops.
“I feel very lucky, because art is a wonderful passion, but one with a lot of loneliness and ego. It is something to be aware of. I already said that I wanted to be a psychologist, but in the end I realized that art comes from other places to the same and in a more fun way. That's how I became a workshop, ”he says.
“The practice of art helps us all, the wonderful thing is that it allows us to be as one is. In the workshops we question and reflect on attitudes and feelings; art helps us to facilitate those impressions, the fears, the vision that one has.
“You have to bear in mind that disability is only a characteristic, it is not the whole person. Obviously, as it is very noticeable, it is the only thing others see; but, to change you have to see and know everything else. "
The gesture and the footprint, by Carmina Hernández, can be visited at Munae (Avenida Hidalgo 39, Centro Histórico) from Tuesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
