Rosa Pascual, MA Narrative Environments
Illustration, Collage, Art book
2019
This art book contains a series of collages in the form of a narrative portrait. Sixto-Juan Zavala met Rosa Pascual, a multidisciplinary artist, in 2019 at Central Saint Martins studying Narrative Environments. The first assignment of the course was to pair up with another student, learn about each other, and design a portrait of them in the media you specialise in. However, this was a challenge in implicit story-telling and the content could not be too explicit. As a graphic designer and illustrator, the book seemed like the most logical choice as a narrative vehicle. The book is digitally printed, using four types of paper, with hand sewn binding, in an edition of two.
A note from the artist:
"We got to know each other walking through the garden next door and walking down the canal to chat under a tree in a garden while waiting for the rain to stop. Hence, the nature references in my project. We started talking about meditation, since we both regularly meditate. Somehow, from there we started talking about rather complex subjects. Rosa is introspective and may seem reserved but is a very deep and reflective thinker. She tends to dress in black but actually loves vibrant colors. The subject that we discussed that I decided to focus on was the duality of the spirit and the body. Rosa expressed a long term conflicted feeling about this dichotomy. I wanted to use a simple black matte cover and have complex imagery on the inside. The illustrations are divided into two halves that progressively split a whole circle into two. The top represents the spirit, using images of the metaphysical and the heavens, and the bottom represents the body, using images of anatomy and the earth."
