Rosa Pascual, MA Narrative Environments

Illustration, Collage, Art book

2019

This art book contains a series of collages in the form of a narrative portrait. Sixto-Juan Zavala met Rosa Pascual, a multidisciplinary artist, in 2019 at Central Saint Martins studying Narrative Environments. The first assignment of the course was to pair up with another student, learn about each other, and design a portrait of them in the media you specialise in. However, this was a challenge in implicit story-telling and the content could not be too explicit. As a graphic designer and illustrator, the book seemed like the most logical choice as a narrative vehicle. The book is digitally printed, using four types of paper, with hand sewn binding, in an edition of two.

A note from the artist:

"We got to know each other walking through the garden next door and walking down the canal to chat under a tree in a garden while waiting for the rain to stop. Hence the nature references in my project. The first thing I remember talking about was meditation, since we both regularly meditate and Rosa had not gotten a chance to practice that day. Somehow from there we started talking immediately about rather deep and complex subjects. Rosa is introspective and may seem reserved but is a very deep and reflective thinker. She tends to dress in black but actually loves vibrant colors. The subject that we discussed that I decided to focus on was the duality of the spirit and the body. Rosa expressed a long term conflicted feeling about this dichotomy. I wanted to use a simple black matte cover but have complex imagery on the inside. The illustrations are divided into two halves that progressively split a whole circle into two. The top represents the spirit, using images of the metaphysical and the heavenly, and the bottom represents the body, using images of anatomy and the earth."