Stained by the Sun V forms part of an area of research in which Belén Rodríguez uses fabric as the basic material for her sculptures. The origins of this body of work can be traced back to Rodríguez's Schönbrunn, an interpretation of the murals in the Schönbrunn palace in Vienna for her installation on the walls of the Tabacalera Centre in Madrid. The original eighteenth-century murals were painted by Wenzel Bergl. They showed paradise-like landscapes, constructed from images of flora and fauna that had been brought back from colonial expeditions to places the artist himself had never been. Belén Rodríguez took these exoticising paintings from an Austrian home and superimposed them on a Spanish factory (also colonial). The genealogy of this work is significant, since it is derived from an accumulation of techniques, knowledge, cultural references and experiences, all expressed through different works by the artist.

After Schönbrunn, Belén travelled to Colombia on an arts residency at the Flora Ars + Natura space, where she created Stained by the Sun V. While there, she saw landscapes similar to those that Bergl had sought to reproduce in Vienna and which she herself had transposed to Madrid. During her stay in Colombia, she acquired local textiles, to which she applied chlorine, a corrosive chemical that acts on the fabric, erasing the images and partially dissolving the material. As Rodríguez herself notes, this subtraction procedure is the microscopic equivalent of carving a stone or a block of wood.

Chlorine reacts differently to different materials, meaning that the results vary from piece to piece. In Stained by the Sun V, the discolouration of the palm fronds and the background creates the sensation of a dazzling, warm sunset. In conventional terms, it is a beautiful image, reinforced by the plant motifs and the faint sense of luminosity. This beauty is in stark contrast to the violence of the process involved in producing the work; the use of bleach on fabric might be seen as an analogy of the effects of colonialism on a territory, with the elimination of existing realities and the imposition of new ones in their likeness. Chlorine is used at both a domestic and an industrial scale. On the one hand, it has associations with the precarious, feminised labour stratum of the capitalist system: 'It’s having a mother with hands cut by chlorine / Aged by cleaning', writes Pedro Lemebel in his Manifesto (I Speak for my Difference). And on the other, it is used in factories like those where some of these textiles are produced. Through this dual dimension, Rodriguez explores the relationship between artisan and industrial processes throughout history. This exploration has affected her art, and today she works largely with natural dyes that she makes herself.

Apart from her interest in the possibilities of dyeing and bleaching the material in the different iterations of her textile works, the artist explores the relationship between her pieces and the spatiality of the exhibition environment. Stained by the Sun V is supported on a grid. In this, it differs from other similar pieces. For example, her I Extract Colour [Yo extraigo el color] is exhibited hanging like a curtain, actively intervening in the architecture to reference a transient, flexible domestic space. The grid of Stained by the Sun V, however, engenders a greater sense of rigidity from a controlling structure. The cross shape is reminiscent of a closed window, emphasising this impression of control; at the same time, it produces an unsettling performative division between interior and exterior, in which the viewer is left outside the picture.

Before being acquired for the collection, Stained by the Sun V was exhibited at the stand of the Galería Alarcón Criado at the Estampa fair in 2019.

Lorenzo García