Marria Pratts · Papallona: Paris

One day, the baby stands up and starts taking its first steps. It is a vertical and expansive being. Babbling leads to words. Hormones settle in, dependence decreases. Marria looks behind and doesn’t remember anything. Darkness and crying. It is said that milk goes to your head. Like the butterfly, we are fragile, vulnerable and changing beings. To leave behind. To close in order to open again.
The word papallona (in Catalan) derives from an expressive and repetitive form associated with children’s babbling, based on a root such as pap-, which evokes the movement of wings, or fluttering.

In Greek culture, metamorphosis was used to describe the transformation of gods, heroes or human beings into animals, plants or natural elements. What does a child turn into? Marria’s characters are genderless, they are transitions between the human and the animal, defying any classification.

They laugh. A disordered and free burst of laugh that mocks the cowboy boots, the pencil overt the oil. The perfection. The technique.

For Marria, Papallona is also a flee to the countryside. An outbreak towards the next step. With the clock’s numbers in mind, time passes differently. The landscape has changed. The sun and the moon are present. The flowers attract insects. Everything is closer and more united. In permanent transformation.

This metamorphosis is happy since it rearranges life to put it in the centre. In the studio, on the table, Yayo Herrera’s last book. Each organism is simply a temporary form adopted by the same vital current that threads all species. Life flows. It transfers from a bacterium to a plant, from a plant to an insect, from an animal to another, from generation to generation. Emanuele Coccia says that the individual is a point of passage. The painting is quick. Moving. 

In Greek mythology, Psyche – whose name means “soul” or “vital breath” – is often represented with butterfly wings. She was a young woman of extraordinary beauty that awakened Aphrodite’s jealousy. The goddess ordered her son Eros to punish her, only for him to end up falling in love with her. After overcoming numerous trials, Psyche attained immortality. The butterfly represents the human soul that matures and is transformed through suffering and love. From the union of Eros and Psyche a daughter named Hedone (Voluptas in latin) was born, whose name means “pleasure”. Just like the paintings exude pleasure from every corner.

Itzpapálotl was a powerful goddess with butterfly wings made from obsidian. She governed a celestial kingdom linked to the stars and the souls of the children who died before being born or during infancy. She was a dual figure: both protector and fearsome, representing life as well as death.

Among the Mexica people, it was also believed that some warriors who had died in battle and women who had died in childbirth returned to Earth transformed into butterflies or hummingbirds to feed on the nectar of flowers. In Japan, if a butterfly flies into a house, it may announce the arrival of a loved one. 

Papallona is joy. Change. Intensity. It is the fresh air after a tunnel.
Open the windows and let the flowers in.

Rosa Lleó, curator & writer