Héctor Zamora
BIO / CV
GATHERED IN ME THEY ONCE AGAIN BECOME LIFE
2025
Art Dubai 2025
Dubai, Emiratos Árabes Unidos
Soñé a menudo con ello. Encerrarme en un capullo –poco importa cuál–: una habitación de mi departamento, una casa de campo en algún país lejano, un submarino en el fondo del mar. Cortar toda relación con el mundo y abandonarme al trabajo de la materia. Sentir que mi alma se talla y se suelda otra vez bajo una forma nueva. Experimentar una fuerza que la cincela, que la modifica de principio a fin. Despertar y no encontrar nada de lo que creía que me pertenecía, de lo que creía ser yo. Despertar y darme cuenta de que incluso el mundo que me rodea es irremediablemente diferente: en textura, en intensidad, en luminosidad.
El proyecto toma su título de la siguiente cita de Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa:
«Soy todo porque solo soy una corriente de vida sin ninguna falla; soy inmortal porque todas las muertes confluyen en mí, desde la del pez de hace un instante hasta la de Zeus, y reunidas en mí vuelven a ser una vida, ya no individual y determinada, sino pánica y, por lo tanto, libre».
Gathered in me they once again become life (2025), presented for the first time at Art Dubai 2025, draws inspiration from the central element of Existence-emitting Movements: the terracotta vessel. In this iteration, the vessel is scaled up to monumental proportions: the project revolves around an uncooked terracotta vessel and features one male performer, establishing a contrast with the previously described work. The performance involves the man approaching the massive, raw vessel and manually carving its walls until they open it, allowing themselves to enter, much like opening a womb. The performer then reconstructs the vessel's walls from the inside, enclosing themselves within it, evoking a return to the womb or a natural cocoon. In this chaotic process where clay and bodies merge, the vessel becomes distorted and may even collapse. The process will be orchestrated through a cyclic rhythm, repeating itself during the fair’s opening days, where the artist will be staging twice the fabrication of the vessel as well as the performance, echoing the central concept of rebirth. The imagery evokes the concept of life creation from clay, a recurring theme in various belief systems, mythologies, and major world religions. The artist takes as a starting point the text by Emmanuele Coccia, Metamorphoses (2021):
I've often dreamt of it. Shutting myself up in a cocoon, it doesn't matter which: a room in my apartment, a country house in some faraway land, a submarine at the bottom of the ocean. Cutting off all relations with the world and giving myself over entirely to the transformative workings of matter. Feeling my soul carving itself out and knitting itself together anew, in a new form. Sensing a force that sculpts it, changing it through and through. Awakening to find nothing of what I thought belonged to me, what was me. Awakening and realizing that even the world around me has been irreversibly altered – in texture, in intensity, in luminosity.
The project takes its title from the following quote by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa:
«I am everything because I am only the stream of life, free of accident. I am immortal because all deaths converge in me, from that of the fish to that of Zeus; gathered in me they once again become life, not individual and particular but belonging to nature and thus free.»