Joelle Lifestyle - The World at Home

Last year at this time, I was preparing to take a trip to Andalusia, Spain. When suddenly I came across a blog talking about the spiritual importance of water in the Islamic architecture of the Alhambra. In the same blog, I saw a picture that made a huge emotional impact on me.

I saved the link and left for Spain. On my way back, I would contact the artist, he certainly lived in Europe I thought and on my way back I ‘ll find more about him. On my arrival to New York, for some reasons my hard drive got burnt and ended up loosing all my information including that particular link. One year later, at a dinner in New York with artist Mattia Biagi and some friends, Yasmina Alaoui and Marco Guerra were right there in front of me.

Still, I had no idea about them being the “the famous link” persona. I found out after dinner only before going to sleep when I checked their website on the business card. There it was the picture that haunted my spirit was back talking to me once more.

I am now in the elevator of their loft on Green Street down in Soho. As soon as I get in I am received by a noisy small dog. The light is just amazing, the afternoon spring sun filters through a Moroccan embroidered white cotton curtain, the window is open, nobody around. Just the sound of an old record player emanating traditional Persian music almost as if prayers are sang around that space to prepare me for exactly don’t know what.

Yasmina dressed in a cute child-like light blue cotton dress with white lace and cowboy boots welcomes me and inviting me to sit. Marco with a large smile on his face comes after a few seconds eating a green apple and offering me one. The dog went sun-bathing on the roof. Yasmina filled him with suntan lotion and I without listening about he dogs tan details I look at the majestic life-sized art work that imperates their high ceilings walls.

Marco Guerra is a Chilean New York based fashion photographer whose works have appeared in the biggest magazines such as Cone Nast Traveler, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue . He tells me that outside his career he is inspired by poet Pablo Neruda poetry, and the intersecting lens of photographer Edward Weston, and Tina Morotti.

He also undertakes personal projects like film and a passionate ode to love and women, he confides me he keeps secretly in a drawer away from everyone else his own world of personal photography, a search devoted in expressing the mysterious, the haunting, the sensual and the sculptured nudes of the human figure evoking the timeless and exoticism of mixed atemporary cultures passing through his life like a in a message.

That message finally understood, he confides me ,thirty years later he’ll exhibit on a powerful and meaningful retrospective solo exhibition . But in India there is a saying: ” You make the plans and the elephants (deities over there) laugh about it”

Yasmina Alaoui North African, precisely Morocco, is an artist herself. She studied Fine Arts in Paris and lived there for 10 years. She then got her BA in Fine Art from the college of William & Mary. Until she met Marco Guerra, her main expression were intricate drawings evoking her cultural heritage, a blend of Islamic calligraphy , Henna patterns and primitive naive arts.

Yasmina and Marco meet in New York and decide to live together. One day, almost by accident, the One thousand and One Nights miracle naturally fits into place. Maybe by coincidence, may be by spiritual drive, maybe by excessive longing for the sake of merging one with the other breaking the safety of the other’s boundaries, Yasmina firmly decides to ask Marco the access to his secret drawer.

Each drawing begins with black and white nude photography by Marco. Layers of complex ink drawings by Yasmina are meticulously added like a spider working on her net, and then digitally fused with the portrait in a breath- taking media solution.

The sun is setting above the Soho roof top. Marco talks about his ” Letting go” he’s still a little stiff about the effort he provided when Yasmina asked her aiming and direct question… I do not listen to him anymore …for a minute I pause sipping my cold water, looking at the sun reflecting when my gaze stops at a small Indian miniature painting they have on a corner of their staircase….

I realize that like in Tantra philosophy, the entire universe is a manifestation of pure consciousness. In manifesting the universe, this pure consciousness seems to become divided into two poles or aspects, neither of which can exist without the other. Shiva and Shakti come immediately in my mind.

One aspect is Shiva, masculine, retains a static quality and remains identified with unmanifested consciousness. Shiva has the power to be but not the power to become or change. The other aspect, Shakti, is feminine, dynamic, energetic and creative. Shakti is the Great Mother of the universe, for it is from her that all form is born.

Like in a miniature universe a legendary collection of tales from the Midlle East or the realism of South American poetry, are found in the cosmos and can be found within each individual, and the same principles that apply to the universe apply in the case of the individual being.

Shiva and Shakti, King Solomon and Bithiah, Marco and Yasmina, unite above the crown of the head with the pure consciousness. This union has the aim in all cultures, Islamic, Indian, Shaman, or Kabbalistic, it doesn’t really matter, to blend into a resolution of duality and a fusion with the Absolute.

By this union liberation is attained while living and considered in Indian Tantric life to be the highest experience: an union of the individual with the universe. The ultimate bliss is a transcendence of dualities male-female, energy-consciousness.

Yasmina is up checking on the dog , Marco wakes me up from my wandering thoughts ” Are you ok?”

“Yes Marco- I answer- thank you. There is a message for me, I think must prepare for a trip. ” “Yes of course..and where are you going?”

“May I have see that portrait again?

Joelle’s Tips:

To purchase Yasmina Alaoui and Marco Guerra contact:

y@yasminaalaoui.com /www.onethousandandonedreams.com

June 5 Exhibit:

Opera Gallery
115 spring street
NY NY 10012
1 212 966 6675