Glenda León. Cada sonido es una forma de tiempo (Every sound is a shape of time), 2015. Artist book. 13 x 19 inches. Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Pérez
Inner silence, mental and spiritual human evolution, beauty, and truth are recurring in themes the work of Cuban visual artist Glenda León. Her artistic productions lead us to reflect on the ability to feel, to appreciate the beauty of things—a poetics of the present marking the thin line between the visible and the invisible, sound and silence, the ephemeral and the eternal.
Influenced by African heritage in Cuban music and Russian avant-garde music traditions of the early twentieth century, sound has always been at the core of León’s visual imaginary. Cada sonido es una forma de tiempo (Every sound is a shape of time) is composed of a series of visual scores based on photographs that the artist has been creating since 2010. For example, in Lluvia (Rain), Léon captures a window with drops of rain; in Vuelo (Flight), birds flying; in Otoño (Autumn), dry leaves on the ground; in Estrellas (Stars), specks of light in the sky; in Azar (Chance), the dots on dice; and in Nombre de todos los dioses (Names of all gods), 130 names of gods from around the world are written in braille. Pentagrams are superimposed on each of these images, creating an empty score where each object represents a musical note: the music comes from the image; the concert is the work of art.
Cada sonido es una forma de tiempo was presented at the Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba at the 12th Havana Biennial, where Cuban pianist Aldo López-Gavilán Junco played the score in a concert on May 24th, 2015.