Teresa Lanceta: “The Knausgård saga seemed like an abuse of my time as a reader”

The textile artist Teresa Lanceta (Barcelona, ​​1951), winner of the 2023 National Fine Arts Prize, stars in two parallel exhibitions: one in the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid and the other in the Museum of Modern Art in Céret, in France.

The dream of the colcedra

,

its exhibition in Valladolid, is part of an investigation into the funerary fabrics of the peninsula between the 13th and 14th centuries.

What do these fabrics tell about the story?

The contribution to the fabrics of each of the three cultures, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, and the historical framework around them.

Does the fact that this project was born from a commission from Patio Herreriano change your working method at all?

Javier Hontoria gave me an open assignment, without guidelines.

However, every project involves changes, sometimes more profound than on this occasion, which have come from the ramifications of the investigation to which Ángel Calvo, the curator, has actively contributed.

The exhibition draws a link between medieval figures such as Blanca de Borbón and contemporary poets such as Alejandra Pizarnik.

What link unites these women?

Pain, violence and, in this case, poetry.

In 2023 he received the National Prize for Plastic Arts.

Is this award also a recognition of textile art?

I guess that's how it is, by opening the limits of art we discover what was not seen.

What other work of art would you have liked to create?

Many, almost all of my work tries to remember works that attract me, seduce me, that I want to have them, enter into dialogue, recognize them.

With what three adjectives would you define your work?

When I go back to what I write I always delete adjectives, it seems to me that they distract, that they dilute... perhaps it reflects insecurity on my part, but the reality is that I am not good with adjectives.

What is the most outlandish thing anyone has said to you about your job?

That he painted what he did in my tapestries, referring to an accuracy in the images.

What book do you have open on your nightstand?

I would love to read in bed, but I never do.

The last one that excited you?

I have been reading Pizarnik, Sandra Santana and Anne Sexton over and over again, for months until I managed to put one or two verses of her poems into the mouths of Leonor de Guzmán, Blanca de Castilla and María de Padilla.

And one that couldn't finish?

When I had already read some entire novels from Knausgård's My Struggle

saga

, I don't remember which one I was only able to read a few pages of and I hated it.

It seemed like an abuse of my time as a reader, something that didn't happen to me with Bolaño's also voluminous novels, which I finished them all.

What is the movie you have seen the most times?

Contrary to what you propose, I am going to refer to

The Holy Innocents,

which I have only been able to see in its entirety once no matter how many times I have tried.

It is impossible for me to hear: “Milana Bonita” and continue watching it… And it is not the most heartbreaking thing about the film…

The last series you watched in one sitting?

True Detective: Polar Night

, it's the last one I've seen but I go back to my previous answer, I don't think I'll ever watch

The Wire

again in my life.

Its power, like that of

The Holy Innocents

, is too close.

If you had to use a song or piece of music as a self-portrait, what would it be?

Could You Be Loved,

I don't listen to it anymore and it's not my favorite, but when I hear it I feel in it.

Do you have any cultural guilty pleasures?

Are Instagram kittens cultural matter?

What is socially overrated?

The opinions.

What job would you never accept?

I have worked for a few years with an alarm clock and a clock, but only a few because I don't handle it well.

Who would you give the next Velázquez Prize to?

I know who I would defend, but I do not think that I am going to be a jury for Velázquez or that I should expose a name in public.

If I hadn't been an artist it would be...

I would like to sing or dance more than knit, but I have no conditions.

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