El Manto de Verónica
Video. Color and sound.
Duration: 11’19” min
Spanish Language
Original Format: Betacam
Projection format: DCP 2K Estereo
Production: Javier Codesal © 1992 Spain
Director: Javier Codesal.
Production: Julia Sieiro, Ignacio Collado, José Antonio Codesal, IZAN JZB S.L.
Production Assistant: Julia Sieiro.
Embroidery of the mantle: Oblatas de Cristo Sacerdote (Zaragoza).
Colaboration: Paz Gimeno.
Photography: Fidel García. Paint Box: Aurora Gómez Cornejo.
Camera operator: José Luis Ureña, Antonio Lizzi.
Posproduction: Francisco Javier López.
Performers: Abrahim Mustafa Gad, Pepe Moreno, Ángel.
Project sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía and by the Biennial of the Moving Image ’92.
Video installation: embroidered mantle, video, framed image.
Rectangular floor plan room (4 x 9 x 6 m.). The longest walls are painted purple up to a height of 2.5 m; on the narrow walls, that painted area is finished off in the form of arches. An enclosure with a barrel vault is insinuated. The ground is also purple. The upper part of the walls and the ceiling are gray. On one of the narrow walls there is a painting and, opposite it, an embroidered mantle on the other. The environment remains dark.
The painting (1.10 x 1.15 m.) is slightly inclined and separated from the wall; presents an image printed on watercolor paper: two hands hold a handkerchief in which the face of a child has been engraved.
The embroidered mantle is mounted on an iron frame, which also supports a 20” video monitor. The embroidery has a central motif (two hands holding a canvas) and another repeated throughout the fabric (schematic layout of the stripes of the hands). The video image is seen through an area of transparent fabric (the canvas of the central motif). The video is a succession of close-ups of three popular singers, separated in each case by the text of the preceding song.
Dimensions: 2,30 x 1,80 x 0,60 m.
Director Bio
Javier Codesal (Sabiñánigo, Huesca, 1958) has a degree in Visual and Hearing Image Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid.
Considered one of the pioneers of video art in Spain, his interest in the body and music stand out in his career – present in productions as different as’ Centauro ‘,’ Sábado legionario ‘,’ Los remotos paises de la pena ‘or the exhibition’ Ponte el cuerpo’-, the approach to themes such as pain, death or illness – for example, through the series ‘Dias de Sida’ – and a series of portraits that includes ‘La habitación de rada’ (on the Balkan War), ‘Mario y Manuel’, ‘Portrait of Francisco del Río’ or ‘Mayte’. Two of his other artistic facets are regularly reflected in his works and installations: poetry and drawing.