“Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless,”
- Khalil Gibran
In the thick blanket of the night in 1849, Harriet Tubman followed a singular fixed light in the sky, the one called the North Star, in order to escape slavery in the South and head towards the northern states, to her freedom. Its guiding light has allowed her to travel back and forth on the North Star railroad system and lead her family and people to their newfound freedom, their slave-free lives, and their new homes.
Victoria Montinola’s “Home” pays homage to a layout of her dreams of what their future as a family would look like. In it bears the simplicity and directness of what her ideal home would mean. Known for her outdoor landscape paintings taken from her memories of the places they have visited locally and abroad; Montinola shifts her focus to personal musings and domestic life. Instead of a structural or architectural design of a house, she leaves us with an inviting pond, where they could share a picnic. She paints us blossoming still life flowers in a vase and lunch box rather than an elaborate interior of lifeless furniture and fixtures. Montinola conjures her hopes for bountiful meals to be shared through a painting of bottles of wine used for cooking home-cooked pastas. At the center of all these is a Mother and Child portrait of her and their son, Miguel and The Jason Montinola portrait— most important foundation of their future home.
Victoria Montinola’s “Home” is a balance between the intangible aspirations and the tangible realities of life in which Montinola finds herself. This exhibition is a clear portrait of a woman who found her North Star and fills her waking life with dreams and future hopes, a place where the destination is immaterial and the question of “with whom?” is already answered.
