AN ARTIST RESIDENCY PROGRAM:

In January of 2021 a magnificent cosmic alignment took place in Lanzarote, I was given the opportunity to stay at the Melia Salinas Hotel and portrait the Island from their Pop-up atelier at the recognized historic building by Fernando Higueras and Cesar Manrique.

I am Sonsoles Masiá, architect and artist, enchanted by landscape and astronomy. I portrayed Lanzarote by selecting ten locations, enchanted by the colours or the magic that prevails, as some of them were witness of the existence of ancient astronomical observatories.

I know that there is something beyond that connects us with the universe and I am certain that there are places endowed with greater sensitivity and energy for observation.

LANDSCAPE, COLOUR AND ASTRONOMY:
Lanzarote is hiding a special and unique secret. Several of its volcanoes contain astroarchaeological sites, revealed by researcher Agustín Demetrio Pallarés Lasso. Pre-Hispanic astronomical and geographical sanctuaries where the observation techniques used, were equivalent to the ones I imitated in my architecture master thesis project, on the neighboring island, thousands of years later.

On the other hand, my obsession with landscape and color started on my travels, on my attempts to listen to what the scene claims.

Colour Observatorium is the title of the final exhibition. The outcome of the residency was 10 painting-constellations of 3 pieces, each of them belonging to one of the selected locations.

More info and pictures:
https://sonso.es/atelieren.html

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The exhibition museography was carried by the art curator Adonay Bermudez. Videos and photos by Malpais audiovisuales.


Colour Observatorium

Sol Muerto is the main piece of the Velatorio Solar Collection, the 190 by 190 cm painting was created at 3:21 am on the night of December 21st-22nd.  Tat night the sun was veiled after its death for 15 hours and 42 minutes in its longest night of darkness. Meanwhile, slowly, in a creative marathon, new pieces will join the ranks of sentinels, of witnesses to this new dawn, waiting for the days to start getting longer.

Inside the vault of White Lab gallery, at the longitude 40.4595854736313 and latitude -3.6890757993729424, on December 21st of 2021, the sun died at 6:22 p.m. until its rebirth at 8:04 a.m., on that same moment when the performance came to an end.

As if it were an initiation rite, this performance aims to induce the artist into a mental state of extreme exhaustion, thus exploring an ancestral state of consciousness, and awakening a primitive instinct remnant of archaic cultures, present in the Roman sat- urnalias or in the yule Celtic. Rites in which the cosmic function of solar death and chaos is represented; and the subsequent triumphant birth of a new solar cycle, Natalis solis invicti.

Natalis solis invicti. Christian Christmas is full of archaic symbolism that takes us to a solar worship of another time.

The waiting during the Advent weeks, where the increasingly long and dark nights are illuminated with candles, and the celebration of the birth of the divinity, is nothing more than an inheritance of those Celtic traditions based on the cult of the sun.

On this project there is an exercise in approaching our origins and our archaic instincts, at a time when we were connected with nature and understood the symbols and elements from nature, present in the stars, which represented times of sowing and harvesting, of fertility and slaughter, of uncertainty and hope of a regeneration of time.

Sol Muerto, 3:21 Velatorio Solar 21

On the night of December 21-22, the sun was veiled after its death for 15 hours and 42 minutes in its longest night of darkness. Meanwhile, slowly, in a creative marathon, new pieces will join the ranks of sentinels, of witnesses to this new dawn, waiting for the days to start getting longer.

Inside the vault of White Lab gallery, at the longitude 40.4595854736313 and latitude -3.6890757993729424, on December 21st of 2021, the sun died at 6:22 p.m. until its rebirth at 8:04 a.m., on that same moment when the performance came to an end.

As if it were an initiation rite, this performance aims to induce the artist into a mental state of extreme exhaustion, thus exploring an ancestral state of consciousness, and awakening a primitive instinct remnant of archaic cultures, present in the Roman sat- urnalias or in the yule Celtic. Rites in which the cosmic function of solar death and chaos is represented; and the subsequent triumphant birth of a new solar cycle, Natalis solis invicti.

Natalis solis invicti. Christian Christmas is full of archaic symbolism that takes us to a solar worship of another time.

The waiting during the Advent weeks, where the increasingly long and dark nights are illuminated with candles, and the celebration of the birth of the divinity, is nothing more than an inheritance of those Celtic traditions based on the cult of the sun.

On this project there is an exercise in approaching our origins and our archaic instincts, at a time when we were connected with nature and understood the symbols and elements from nature, present in the stars, which represented times of sowing and harvesting, of fertility and slaughter, of uncertainty and hope of a regeneration of time.

More info and full colection:
https://sonso.es/vigiliasolar.html

Velatorio Solar 21

THE HERACLEEAN PATH

Through this artistic landscape project, we will pursue our ancestors' footsteps going on an ancient pilgrimage, towards the primal sunset.

 This project aims to connect the traditional Camino de Santiago with an ancestral rite of solar worship, which has been dragging man for millennia to pay homage to the stars on the coast of Finisterre.

For centuries there has been nothing more primitive than following the path of the sun, the path of the stars through the Milky Way. A journey towards the encounter with the sacred, to witness the death of the sun in the ocean. 

Thus exploring a state of ancestral consciousness and awakening a primitive instinct remnant of archaic cultures, present in the Jacobean traditions that were inspired by a pre-existing religious background fed with Roman and Celtic elements.



 AN ANCESTRAL PATH

 Various studies recognize Galicia as the mecca of pilgrimage in pre-Christian and pre-Roman cultures. From Aristotle who described the Heracleian way and affirmed the existence of an ancient pilgrimage path that followed in footsteps of the solar hero Hercules to borrow the cauldron from Helios.

 The studies on the French path and the descriptions of Atienza* and Charpentier* of a cult that has been erased, of a cult through the old Roman road, already built on Ligurian, Celtic and Swabian traces. It describes the reluctant transition into Christianization, to the conversion of gods, sanctuaries and festivities. Leaving clues in toponyms, marks on the temple's stones and magical coincidences of festivities with revered astronomical events such as the solstices or equinoxes. 
 
A pilgrimage full of signs that affirm the existence of an ancestral and pagan initiation path.

 Other contemporary authors such as A. Bouzas describe the path as a network of temples and astronomical observatories of celestial deities. Astronomical observatories in which a priestly caste already had very advanced knowledge about the movement of the stars, based on the naked eye observation of space over time. Creating myths and gods to explain the patterns of stable behavior that the universe has. Marking their solar and lunar maps on the rocks and petroglyphs throughout Celtic Spain, along the Camino de Santiago.


A PATH OF STARS

Bouzas* gives some transcendental keys to understand the function of the location of the saint's sepulcher, it is not only a place of passage towards finisterre, ¨it is an optimal place for the practice of horizon astronomy¨, The megalithic complex of Santiago, the Castriño de Conxo, el Libredón, are perfectly located at a confluence of natural astronomical markers present in the landscape.

 Taking the characteristic Pico Sacro as a reference, it offers us a point of reference for Solar observation, coinciding with the position of the sun at the dawn of the winter solstice and with the rising of Sirius, in the constellation Canis, which both on December 30 and on July 25 it enters and leaves to form part of the visible constellations in the night sky. Dates that match with the festivities of the saint and close to the Celtic Lugnasad.
 
Another solar observation point is Monte da Pena that marks the sunset at the equinox.

As a lunar observatory, this function is offered by the alignment of Castriño with the old city of Santiago and the Montes de Vella, Nemenzo (from the celtic ¨sanctuary¨), which coincides with the Moon's largest lunatice.

It is therefore an observatory of geographical references N - W with Pena de Vella and Monte Pindo pointing to Finisterre. The Pedroso and Fontecova mountains to the north, thus allowing the behavior of the circumpolar constellations to be analyzed.

It is no coincidence that the tomb of the saint appeared in a place called the star field, that its festivities coincide with pagan celebrations or that the myths of the saint, arrival in Galicia and burial coincide with the thesis of a three-phase solar cult: rebirth, death and ascension of the body.

Atienza, J., 2002. La ruta sagrada. Barcelona: RobinBook.

Charpentier, L., 1978. El misterio de Compostela. Esplugas de Llobregat, Barcelona: Plaza & Janés.

 Bouzas Sierra, A., 2009. Aportaciones para una reinterpretación astronómica de Santiago de Compostela. Anuario Brigantino 2009, (32)



The Ancient Pilgrimage

OCEAN AND MOON:
AN IDEA BORN WITH THE TIDES

On this work, I had sought the connection between celestial bodies and the sea, discovering how the influence of the moon and the sun create the cycles on which our oceans are based and the vital and hormonal cycles of our body. Everything is connected in a perfect balance; the tides are the result of an amalgam of gravitational forces whose variations and changes influence the voracity and size of the tides. At the time of the creation of this work there were several astronomical events that created a specific moment for the observation and representation of this landscape. Leaving that piece anchored in time, in its moment of creation, in a certain way is a way of capturing time, that concept that escapes our hands and is elusive to be represented.

LANDSCAPE AND TIME:

On top of a temporal stage surrounded by water, a jetty rising front the sea in front of the Meliá Salinas Hotel, Lanzarote.
And immediately after the dawn of a New Moon on September 7, 2021, the sunrise followed, and two minutes later the slack water moment took place. Also called rebound, it is the moment in which the speed of the tide is equal to zero and the current is canceled during the change from low tide to high tide.

It is, in that precise moment, when the moon and the sun continue their journey through the cosmos and begin to cancel their force of gravity, releasing the gravitational bonds that imprisoned our oceans. Then, at that moment, the sea begins its way back towards the coast.

AN EQUINOCCIAL SPRING TIDE:

This low tide is not a capricious one; it is a low water equinoctial spring. During the autumn and spring equinox, the angle that our axis has with respect to the ellipse of the sun is 90 and the influence with which the sun attracts the tides is perpendicular, that is, greater. This is increased during the new moon by the union of gravitational forces at the same angle, the Sun and the moon work as the same team and together they drag the waters towards them.

The slack or rebound moment in front of Meliá Salinas Lanzarote. An equinoccial spring.

TWO ORBS, TWO PAINTINGS:

The final outcome of this project was a complete set of two paintings:

-The top one, child of the moon, belongs to Meliá Salinas Lanzarote and its on display at the Hotel under the name "Momento de Estoa Sigizia Equinoccial", 125x15 cm Acrylic on framed canvas.

-The bottom one, at slack time, child of the sun, its available for purchase at 1600€, unframed on a flat canvas of 140 x 140cm.


Momento de Estoa  Sigizia Equinoccial

CREATING DURING THE LONGEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR:
AN IDEA BORN IN THE WINTER SOLSTICE

This painting is the large scale limited version of the original idea. Which was born during a painting marathon performance on a winter solstice night. The artist Sonsoles Masiá, intrigued by astronomy, creates during astronomical events as equinox, solstices or metheor showers.

A COLLABORATIVE PAINTING PERFORMANCE

A collaboration with other artist, hand by hand with solar sister Shanna M. Casey, we honored the solstice night on a streamed performance during the longest night of the year, 20th - 21st of December of 2020. The performance was divided in two parts: YIA and SOLSTICE NIGHT as a transition during the dark hours.

On the 20th of December, the artist presents the longest night of the year materialized in a streamed performance and a painting collection. The dark will witness her creations, starting from 2 hours after sunset, when all light is gone. At 18:38 is the moment when the astronomical dusk takes place, the third twilight. In that darkness the artist will start her performance. The performance will take place until two hours before sunrise on the 21st of December, right at the astronomical Dawn, at 6:42 the first twilight. 13 hours and 02 minutes of artistic expression where she induces herself into an extreme state of mind of exhaustion, finding a primitive instinct based on the hope for the rebirth of the sun. Searching for the ancient feeling of uncertainty and faith for longer days that our ancestors experienced during the saturnalia's festivities.

PROJECT MANIFESTO:

Since the beginning of humankind, we have looked to the sky to find signals that guide us through the transitions of the seasons and the times to sow and harvest. Proof of this are the many found traditional astronomical observatories like Stonehenge, or any other Neolithic archaeoastronomical sites. In the modern day, there is still something magical and primitive about looking up to the sky and trying to understand the movement of the celestial bodies and our position among them. Observatories not only provide a functional and scientific aspect; they also explore a spiritual dimension. There is hope for the rebirth of the sun; when the days slowly become longer, and the nights are marked by lingering sunsets. These moments have influenced the spiritual emotions of humans, and has similarly inspired the artist to create this performance.

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