LA CONEXION PERFECTA

A short video documentary about performer and singer, Susana Baca, confessing to multimedia artist, Grimanesa Amoros, in a intimate way, why she alway performs without shoes.

“To have naked feet means freedom (“la libertad”). Since I was little I always had the sensation that when I freed myself from shoes, I would also free my body and the voice of my soul.”

For this reason—to free her soul—, Susana chooses to perform in bare feet so that it will shine through in her voice. Susana’s elation is visible in her performance, making it intensely beautiful.

She once told me of walking along a shoreline, watching the gulls float over the water. Their wings are like her bare feet, she felt, opened to the air to carry them freely in their dance with the waves and the sky. As the birds can only fly with their wings bared to the wind, so too she can only dance with her feet bared to the earth.

This video, set to her songs “Se Me Van Lo Pies” (“My Feet Are Leaving Me”) is an expression of this connection that Susana makes between physical and creative freedom. These images create visual parallels, expressing the feeling of the song, of the singer, and of my own creative process.

An artist can free the soul of the viewers through an unencumbered expression of his or her experience. In this work I am both viewer and creator, this position lending me a freedom that connects me with Susana’s freedom and with that of my own soul.