El hilo de la memoria: Belén Esparza o cómo tejer un archivo

Sometimes the natural circumstances of life make us get rid of clothes, crockery, furniture, books, papers, documents... physical objects that bear witness to our history. However, their elimination does not erase the memories, which stay anchored in our mind. The same thing happens with architectural archives, in a less drastic or dramatic way, because sometimes the plans, sketches and other documents produced by an architect can be understood as the first step of a process that has culminated in the built work, more relevant and transcendent than the drawings of the design phase. However, there is an instinct to try to conserve these documents, with a diffuse purpose: to remember? to transcend? to teach? The figure of Belén Esparza and her peculiar method of conserving her own archive shows how the female gaze on the decisions that revolve around the management of an archive differs from the male one, taking a more poetic and personal approach, but also a more pragmatic one. Her own history influences and takes shape in a process that updates the I Do, I Undo, I Redo, coined by Louise Bourgeois.