Doodle Walks, Ruskin Gallery

I was born in Lima, Perú but have lived in St Ives in Cornwall since 2013. In the late 1970s I studied archaeology and journalism at San Marcos University in Lima. From then until now I have travelled and walked through the mountains in Peru and the coastal paths in Cornwall meeting people and chewing coca to resist fatigue. I began the year recording my walks with a mobile video camera. I call this experience “doodle walking” since it feels like sketching in a quest for thoughts and emotional, spiritual trances. This method creates a link between my past and present and gives me the chance to explore the unspoken things and strange imagery that float into my thoughts.

I am sharing these intimate videos in PLACE as I believe they complete the narrative of my work: the gap between the real and the imaginary, that is present everywhere in life. What is between what we see and what we imagine? Our imagination is always completing and filling, editing and removing, creating interpretations of people and the world. Since I have never met the participants in this exhibition with their expressions and mannerisms, I sent each a letter asking them for a drawing, an object, a word. With the replies, I have created a visual and imaginary construction of them and for them.

I believe that my attempt to build bridges with people is ultimately an exploration of self and how we place ourselves as individuals. Between two or more languages, there are breaches. What is real and what we imagine is explored using a combination of my own video walks and a screen-printed image. For the latter I have used the responses participants sent me and some other pieces that have been collected from elsewhere.

Thank you to the artists who joined me in my game.