Joya: AiR / Alessandra Stradella / Italy / USA
photo Simon Beckmann
Joya: AiR / After the Experience
‘There is something absolutely special about Joya: AiR. I will try to translate into words, although there is so much that I will not be able to capture. In fact, I believe this may define the essence of what I lived there: it being beyond what can be narrated, almost a rare quality of pure experience.
On the way to Los Gázquez (home of Joya: AiR) from Vélez Rubio, that’s where my residency began. The roads and the views are breathtaking, they tell you already of beautiful things to come. Los Gázquez is an enchanted place, so calm and peaceful, yet so vibrant. The way I remember it is as an encounter: with your own self, with others, with nature. I felt at home from the very moment I arrived.
I came to Joya: AiR with the desire to engage physically with the process of painting and try acrylic and pastels on large-scale paper. One of the reasons I paint is to set concepts, reasoning, and judgment aside. Those define my life as a philosophy professor. Abstract painting takes me into a different territory. I wanted to work from within the painting and I wanted to let things happen, just listening, living, and responding to whatever I would have felt when honestly placed in front of nature. That was my project, and so much more has happened.
I spent my time as it unveiled, naturally. There were no constraints, no expectations. I found myself producing much more than I ever expected. There was an energy in the space, in the silence, in the interactions, in the conversations that inspired me endlessly. It was an inner urgency, an urgency without urgency. The studio I was offered was a sacred space, so beautiful. I just loved my time spent there, I felt as living within the process of creation.
I got to Joya: AiR with a creative project and I found myself into much more and much higher than the mine. Time there has been a time for reflection on how to live, a reminder of how effortless and rich life can be, if lived and savoured in all its simplicity.
Time gets back to lived time, as opposed to clock time. Nature gets back to all its majesty and power. Things get back to their thingness. Labels get stripped and you encounter nature for what it is. A tree, a road, a sunset, a stone, a sound, the wind, the moon, they are back to be what they are. Nature regains its sublimity.
I remember very vividly the awe and respect, the exhilaration, but also the uneasiness and discomfort, and even the pain I felt just looking at nature. At times, a sunset was too much to take in. It has been such an awakening and humbling experience just to be there. There is something absolutely humbling and unifying about taking walks in pure solitude or having dinner with your new friends under a sky full of stars. It is a strong sense of belonging.
Donna and Simon: Thank you for your warmth and your generosity, your inspiring conversations and our laughs, and the fabulous, fabulous dinners.
Thank you to all the beautiful and generous artists, my companions in this adventure. I owe you so much. I am so deeply grateful for all the time and the experiences we shared. I felt as living in an embrace.
I hope to be back one day. Thank you from my deepest heart’.
Alessandra Stradella
M.A. in Philosophy at Georgia State University (2002), and a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Emory University (2008). Assistant Professor in Philosophy with a specialisation in Philosophy of Art at Philadelphia since 2008.
March 2019, awarded the third prize for Abstract Painting at the Annual Exhibition at Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia. 2019 participated to the Collective Exhibit, Art et Al., Da Vinci Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA.
Publications in Academia: “Performance Art and the Seduction of Theatricality,” Philosophy Study, 2012, “The Fiction of the Standard of Taste: David Hume on the Social Constitution of Beauty,” The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 2012, “On Grief: An Aesthetic Defense,” Philosophical Practice, 2011, “The Dramatic Nature of Our Selves: David Hume and the Theatre Metaphor,” Literature and Aesthetics, 2010.