Cristina Navarro

Movil, Nickel-plated brass, 2008

《动》, 镀镍黄铜， 装置

Born in Ceuta, she graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid and the Polytechnic of Valencia in painting and engraving specialties.

She had more than 100 exhibitions in Spain, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium.

Cristina Navarro's work places us in a phase preceding the word, even before that inaugural moment that the Bible states: “and in the beginning was the verb”. At first glance, when we look at some of her creations, we only see a mass of lines and colors. A closer look, however, allows us to immediately distinguish different signs: squares and circles, arrows and helices, anthropomorphic schematized figures and other types of pictograms such as spirals, bridges or semicircles of different colors. It is the disorder and chaos found in this beginning of the beginning. Some of these signs have managed to detach themselves from the group, to separate from the others, to the point of abandoning the fabric. Almost all painters love to experiment with three-dimensionality and capture space in all its dimensions, beyond the limits of painting. Cristina Navarro does it too, even if in her case it seems that they are the signs that have acquired autonomy by themselves and joined with others in a sort of vertical articulation until they become chains of meaning of unknown codes.

The color, together with the signs, is the other in the work of Cristina Navarro undisputed protagonist. Thanks to color, her work is a real “piece of painting”, a material and integral product, far from any conceptual pretense. Since silence is opposed to talkativeness, the color in her paintings is opposed to all those signs that crowd loudly.

The blues, reds or yellows, as well as the rest of the colors used by Cristina Navarro, anchor her work to the materiality of the painting. Those colors made flesh, which cover monochrome and intense surfaces, know how to catch our gaze, stop it and make it an accomplice to the pleasure of color, light and, in a word, painting.

"Woman. Blonde. Skinny. Pale. Writer. Photographer. Art Collector. Anorexic for 38 years. Depressive. Agoraphobic for 8 years. The product of self-destruction. Visibly invisible, elusive, myth, words, images, memories. A rationalist woman, betrayed by the mirror and her eyes. Now, I challenge myself as Eve, with the camera, for the first time ever to try to recognize and forgive myself."

Ruth, LA FEMME DE DUEIL, PART II – Ruth Baza Self-Portrait.

《Ruth, 决斗的女人, 第二部－－Ruth Baza 自画像》

“Bargaining. Veils fall. Truce. Eerily pale”.

Digital Black & White Photography  黑白摄影

Resolution 300x300  分辨率

Height 高 4961 x Width 宽 3508

2021

Ruth Baza (February 29, 1972 Madrid) is an author, journalist, poet, photographer and specialist in antique and vintage fashion and textiles, Central Asia textiles and costume.

Voyager, storyteller, interiors designer, cook and antiques, art and eccentricities collector.

Former classical ballet dancer and model, violin player, a compulsive reader, a compulsive writer and a tireless learner.

THE STORYTELLER, PART I

Ruth Baza is a nomad. She had a peripatetic childhood and a quite hectic and exciting career from a very early age as a journalist, photographer, author and artist.

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If something stands out in the biography of this writer, it is her precociousness both on a personal and professional level. Ruth was born and raised in an unconventional, polycultural and cosmopolite family, but also unstructured, and from a very young age she was fortunate to travel all over the world. According to the chapter author, activist and friend Alina Fernández dedicated her in the book Una hoja de Lechuga (Temas de Hoy, 2000), “Due to the traumatic and early circumstances of her parent ́s separation, Ruth traveled from one place to another like a migratory bird. She lived with her grandparents and her mother for long periods of time. Her Jewish grandfather was her closest friend, her accomplice, and moreover, her mentor and teacher. And suddenly, from one day to the other, she was with her father, who had such a different life in any exotic country. Her grandfather initiated her in music and literature. She was immersed in studies, in dance. In Europe she had a happy life as a child, albeit in an adult world. "

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Living in places as different as San Juan, Nairobi, Johannesbourgh, Jerusalem, Madrid, Washington, Los Angeles, New York or Tokyo -in the last two cities already as a correspondent and writer-, gave her a deep sense of being more a citizen of the world than belonging to a particular place. She nurtured herself very well, everywhere, driven by curiosity and her innate need to learn. She liked and enjoyed diversity, the cultural contrasts, the generational differences, the widest range of colors, scents and flavors; she learnt from the blacks and whites of the cities, the richness of life in motion and her tireless and loyal friend, loneliness, always accompanied by her diary, her books, her toys and her first bibelots; she also noursihed from the textures and motifs of the fabrics, the width of the streets, the grandeur of the museums; the freedom of the natural spaces, the straight and endless lines of the skyscrapers, the peaceful oceans or the savanna sheet that became synonymous of her broken dreams before reaching adolescence.

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She spent her childhood surrounded by art and artists. Having a great capacity for learning, and a greater curiosity and imagination, she also had at hand all kinds of resources to express her feelings and thoughts, “from an early age in my life I gravitated toward writing, literature, and great stories, and did not disdain almost any literary genre,” says Ruth. “My first short story was published at 16. but I wrote stories, poetry and even press articles from long, long before. Around the age of 15 or 16 I started collecting all kinds of editions of books by my favorite authors: from paperback and second-hand books, to first editions of Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Jane

Austen, Lord Byron, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus or Charles Dickens, to name just a few. I always knew instinctively that I would be a writer but also a journalist - and an adventurer like Tintin with a touch of "Charlie's Angel."

In 1989, aged 16, her hyper realistic short story about homeless people titled El Vagabundo was published in the cultural magazine El Europeo. Later that year she moved to New York to study Journalism and Mass Media at NYU while working as freelance correspondent for the spanish movie magazines Interfilms and Fotogramas, and El Mundo, but she left the university after the first semester. She traveled to Kuwait when the First Gulf War began to collaborate as a translator and co-write some chronicles. She settled in New York and Madrid, and started contributing in Premiere and Seventeen as well. Soon after her articles, pictures and essays were published in a number of media, including Cosmopolitan, Ragazza, El Gran Musical and Cambio 16.

Since then, she spent the following 13 years as freelance journalist and photojournalist travelling around the world in search of interesting stories, making custom-made interviews, taking personalitie ́s portraits, alive concerts and social events pictures, mainly in black-and- white, for the mentioned media and other publications including The Guardian, Cinemanía, El Semanal, Interviú, Il Corriere della Sera, GQ, El Correo, NME, Primera Línea, Popular 1, ZERO, 50Easy, DT Magazine or Woman.

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Ruth was, no doubdt, very lucky from day one of her career, to meet, interview -well, better said, chat for long-, photograph, share cupcakes, coffee or tea, and even befriend, musicians, painters, authors, architects, travellers, film makers and celebrities ranging from Anjelica Huston, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Paul McCartney, Iggy Pop, Gerard Depardieu, Slash, John Kennedy Jr., Yoko Ono, Kurt Cobain, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Angel Corella, Howard Stern, Jean- Michel Jarre, James Elroy, Adam Ant, Roman Polanski, Bruce Willis, Isabella Rosellini, Billy Idol, Luciano Pavarotti, Eric Clapton, Dennis Rodman, Peter Eisenman, Albert Ellis, Peter Fonda, Nick Nolte., Blur, Björk, The Cult, KD Lang, Richey James, Eric Roberts, Arnold Scharzenegger, Duran Duran... Hundreds of lifes, hundreds of stories, hundreds of portraits, hundreds of pages, hundreds of thanks...

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A number of her articles, interviews and works have been included or mentioned in books, thesis and other works by several authors and scholars, among which stand out Leopoldo Alas, Antonio Miguel Bañón, Ricardo Llamas, E. F. Navarro Martínez, Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinemtográficas de España, Biblioteca de Mujeres, Raquel Elices Mediavilla, Enrique Castillo Pesado, Diego Galán, Ruth Toledano, etc.

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THE STORYTELLER, PART II

Ruth is the author of several novels, biographies, essays, poetry books and short stories, which includes the public and critic acclaimed documentary-book La Vida Intermitente published by Random House Mondadori in 1999.

La Vida Intermitente was adapted for the stage by Pedro Penim, the prestigious portuguese actor, director, playwright and founding member of Teatro Praga, a Lisbon theater company with which he usually works and with which he has received several awards. The play was awarded in 2000 with the Teatro Amador Award of Lisbon for the Best play of the Year.

Author, activist and friend Alina Fernández dedicated Ruth a long, hard and tender chapter on her book Una hoja de lechuga (Temas de Hoy, 2002), titled "Ruth, Miedo a ser Mujer", based on several interviews and time they spent together, after Ruth publicly opened up about her struggles with anorexia and major depression since 11 years old in the book launch event of La Vida Intermitente in 1999.

She is also known for participating in TV and Radio shows including Pop 7 (TM3, co-host), En el calor de la noche (Radio Minuto), Caliente y Frío (Onda Cero), Día a la Vista (Ràdio 4, RNE Radio Show hosted by Jordi González, co-host) and she was dedicated the documentary film "La Vida Intermitente" directed by Jose Antonio León (Croma Televisión).

A prolific letter writer as letters are her primary means of personal conversation, these letters along her diary contains more than 20.000 pages and still growing.

In 2020, Ruth finished a new novel and two poetry books, one in english and the other spanish.

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In 2021 she has started an experimental photographic work, LA FEMME ETOILIQUEE ou LA FEMME EN CONSTRUCTION, the most intimate and risky project she has ever faced. For the first time in her life and career, the author, who suffers anorexia nervosa and major depression for 38 years, and agoraphobia for 8 years, and lives in complete solitude and total cloistering, decided a few months ago, in an act of escapism as daring and dangerous as exciting and moreover, vital, to start making her own self-portraits, showing her face and body, dressed and half covered in all kinds of clothes, accessories and even works of art from her Collections, and completely naked to try to resolve and get to know herself in the images because they are independent, oblivious to her gaze and mirrors.

She has decided to direct her gaze to herself in a different way than she has always done. Indulgent, without censorship, without shame, without prejudice. For this reason she could not use her eyes, but the camera lens. Because the camera is objective. She does not.

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The fact that Artist and Model are the same thing is a novelty and, at the same time, shocking for Ruth, who lives in permanent struggle against the fragmentation of her emotions and rationalism, physical distortion and therefore, suffering. So, this exercise in the form of self- portraits is both catharsis and armistice, which, little by little, is making her aware of how she really looks like. And her body is slowly becoming a word in her vocabulary.

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The photographs of LA FEMME ETOILIQUEE ou LA FEMME EN CONSTRUCTION are automatic and symptomatic expressions of the author's transformations. They are both compositions and natural. Direct, sober and elegant. They are shrouded in a kind of aura of mystery. They belong to the moment. Their beginning and their end are the present but they are timeless, evocative, tender, fascinating paintings of sensations due to their patina of paintings rather than photographs. They remind the Works of several early Masters of photography and filmmaking, as affectionately described some of these works a very beloved filmmaker.

Pictures or photographs in black and white, and color, beautiful, peaceful, provocative or shocking, these images are the testimony of her isolation and her huge desire to live despite all the boundaries and difficulties she deals with: pain, sadness, invisibility, loneliness, vertigo, spatial immobility, the passage of time, the incomprehension of many in the face of a lifestyle that is perceived as a kind of capricious break with the norm, when she has not chosen to live this way.

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Having made this tough but unavoidable decision to undress literally and metaphorically as a woman and as an artist is proof of her need to make herself visible to herself and to the others. She does not intend to apologize or make apology of her condition, nor for her audacity. She just wants to see and recognize herself and be seen just the way she is.

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THE STORYTELLER, PART III

Ruth’s career took an interesting turn though after a series of personal looses in 2001. “I suppose in some respects my career as a journalist and writer has gone better than I expected, probably because it is vocational and writing is the best thing I do in my life, but I’ve learned that one must be flexible, malleable and ready to try new challenges.” In 2002 she studied Interior Design at The Inchbald School of Design (London), and one year later, she moved to Florence (Italy) to relax but also she did an apprenticeship with a veteran shoemaker while studying Italian and Art at Michelangelo Academy.

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In 2003 launched her own namesake firm of one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry, clothing and accessories made of antique and vintage stuff. The main inspiration for the brand was Ruth ́s love of Victorian era, music, art and the beatniks, and her pieces were sold exclusively in high end and vintage stores in Madrid, Barcelona and Paris (Colette, Piamonte, Beba ́s Closet, Federica & co, Gallery, Europa Europa, Lotta Vintage). The collections found tremendous success with clients including Victoria Beckham, Kristin Davis, Amparo Llanos (pop rock band Dover lead singer), Bebe (actress and singer) and Verónica Forqué (actress), and were featured in Vogue, Elle, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Tatler and Woman (*more).

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A good number of Ruth ́s accessories, vintage and antique clothing from her Collection and have been exhibited and featured in TV productions, Films, Magazines, Exhibitions and social events, like Pedro Almodóvar films "Broken Embraces" & "The Skin I Live In", Julio Médem film "Caótica Ana", Vogue (Spain), Vogue Brides, Elle (Spain), Fashion Mission, Bust Magazine (US), In Style Magazine, Woman (Spain), Yo Dona, Tatler Magazine, Poirot (TV), Miss Marple (TV), Peaky Blinders (TV), Penny Dreadful (TV), Sherlock (TV), Goya Awards, San Sebastián Film Festival, New York Fashion Week, La Hora Wiki (TV), Madrid Fashion Week, and many more.

Ruth has specialized in Antique Fashion, Textiles and Textiles from Central Asia dating from the Renaissance through the early to mid 20th century. A passionate art and antiques collector, she established in 2004 the multidisciplinary studio, Time For Tea. Although her priorities are writing and photography, she also works as an independent researcher, consultant and personal curator for several worldwide renown fine antique dealers, auction houses and private collectors.

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Her interior projects include residential houses in London, NY, Madrid, Frankfurt, Segovia and Berlin. Clearly inspired by Dickens and Proust, the Gustavian interiors painted by Vilhelm Hammershoi and Carl Vilhelm Holsoe, and the rare beauty of derelict, as a good environmental defender and recycling, she creates and restores rooms and homes from recovered and forgotten pieces, unusual finds, art and a combination of different materials, lighting, colors and textures.

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Her style in everything she does is inevitably stigmatized by her cosmopolitanism, the mixture of cultures, loneliness and the varied intellectual and artistic nourishment received from childhood, and therefore, it is far from conventionalisms and artificial ties, and it describes well her mood and the reality that surrounds her. This free way of expressing herself without invading other people's spaces nor following fashions or trends, is something that would be described as honest intellectual stripteases combined with sensuousness in its purest form. Sensory art to enjoy with all the senses. No cheating, no pretending, no fakes. Pure existentialism and philosophical vitalism.

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This is the paradox of the rationalist woman trapped in a treacherous body, who draws strength from weakness and resists, rebels, reveals and dares to go where angels cannot ... Always with elegance, wherever inspiration takes her, one thing will be certain: Ruth will continue being herself.

Just a woman... Just, ruth.

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THE STORYTELLER, PART IV

Books & Biographical Essays

* La vida intermitente (Mondadori, Rerservoir Books 1.999; Mondadori, Mitos de Bolsillo 2002, iUniverse 2001)

* La dolce vita (HMR Hijos de Muley-Rubio, 1.999)

* La primera vez: una producción de Elías Querejeta (Festival de Cine Español de Malaga, 2.000)

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Poetry & Art books

* IN2 Japan (Vasava Artworks, 1.999)
* Laponia (Sugerencia Editorial, 2.000) * Piedra, papel y tijeras (RB, 2.001)
* Tendencias suicidas (RB, 2.002)
* Santa Águeda / H2O (Fiftyeasy, 2002)

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Short stories & Art catalogs

* Antonio de Felipe: 100% Refrescante w Laura Revuelta (Fundación BBK, 1.996) * Pavana para el difunto Ravel (Downtown Magazine, 1996)
* Los niños del domingo (Downtown Magazine, 1996)
* Beatlemanía. Un año de Rock VV.AA (Luca Editorial, 1992-1993)

* La luna falsita. After hours: una muestra de "cult fiction" (Mondadori, Reservoir Books 1999) * Aurora, una historia impresionista de prostitución en tres lonchas. Vanidad (1999)
* Kousurata (Vanidad Magazine, 2000)
* Vaginometría. Evophat: the carrot, 58 visions. (2001

* La cocina kosher psicoactiva de Ruth Baza. Apología de la marihuana by Cristobal Cobo Quintas (Valdemar, 2002)

* Rewind. VANIDAD The Skin I Lived (Egoiste, 2002)

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THE STORYTELLER, PART V

Exhibitions, Artistic Projects & Charity

* ANGELUS: Levi ́s Vintage Clothing "Self Expression" -w. Artus de Lavilleón, Mark Gonzales, Takaho Inoue, Ringo Manabe, Pablo Monzón, Eduard Escoffet and Blami- (Spring 2000)

* LA BEAUTÉ EST DANS LA RUE: Lucky Strike Collective -w. Cuca Canals, Carlos Medina, David Dunan, Bernat Lliteras and Salva G- (Barcelona Circuit, 2000)

* VAGINOMETRÍA: Evophat (Vasava Artworks, 2002)

* SUICIDAL TENDENCIES: Art installations made of antique razor blades and mural pictures in collaboration with the Argentinian poet, Diego Oscar Radío (Galería M Rojas, 2002)

* INTO MY SHOES (Galería M Rojas, 2003)

* PRECIOUS BAG by MIN: w. Armand Basi, Antonio Miró, Victorio & Lucchino, Lottusse Shoes, Converse, Adolfo Domínguez, Ion Fiz, Francis Montesinos, Miguel Palacio, Montblanc, TCN, Marithé+François Girbaud and Juanjo Oliva- (2.006 -3rd Annual Solidarity Gala at Madrid Zarzuela Hippodrome )

* DENIM MIN: w. David Delfín, Konrad Muhr, Lois, Desigual, Joaquim Verdú, Juanjo Oliva , Miró Jeans, Victorio & Lucchino, and special guests including Victoria Beckham Jeans, CK Jeans, D&G, Levis, Diesel, DKNY Jeans, Custo and Lee- (2.007 -4th Annual Solidarity Gala in Barcelona)

* MEMENTO MORI (Madrid, FEM 2007)

* ALMONEDA (Madrid, 2008)

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Ruth worked and supported the following brands as a Consultant, Writer and/or Brand Ambassador

* Bally
* Axupuncture
* Sweater House
* Zone
* Julie Sohn
* Marina Danko
* Joyería Suárez (One Collection, 2009. Fundación Aladina)

Coordinates of the online exhibition:

Title: The unbearable lightness of being

            Online collective exhibition curated by Weizhen Jiang

From 12 April to 12 May 2021

only online at

Info: ;

* for optimal viewing, computer use is recommended