IN MEMORIAM. TERESA BURGA

I was chatting with some friends, who used to be my students, as a result of your departure. They told me that one day they saw you in a gallery and becauser they were your fans, they went to greet you. While we were reminding you, one of them asked how it would have been having you as a teacher. I laughed (XD), because obviously neither they nor I imagine it and, in fact, probably neither do you, considering that on more than one occasion our conversations revolved around the dissatisfaction that we felt in the face of the training received in our soul mater (coincidentally, I also talk about it with them). Nevertheless, although you never taught me, yes I have learned from you. I have very much in mind your lesson on the importance of continuing, with or without breaks. After so many years, you reconnected with your artistic practice and your creative concerns, recovering that capacity for the game and the surprise that characterizes your work. But in order to continue, you had to resist: to the incomprehension of a public that hardly understood your bet and your explorations and, even earlier, resist the rejection of prominent colleagues who denied your talent, for it pointed in new and risky directions at who were unable to address. And, even before that, you resisted criticism from
your teachers who belittled the value of your explorations, perhaps because deep down they found them threatening. All this required, first, a generous dose of humor. Humor you vitally stimulated and guided your discoveries, giving it a playful character and glad to your work. That is your legacy today for all of us: the great lesson of possibility invented, welcomed and celebrated. Your work is the tangible and intangible testimony — object and non-object — that it is possible discover, where apparently there is nothing, something great that later we can't stop seeing, because it would be indispensable to us.

Max Hernández Calvo