ALBERTO GARCIA-ALVAREZ, from light, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 1650mm H x 1120mm W

97-year-old Auckland-based artist Alberto Garcia-Alvarez describes the Spanish term ‘duende’ as:

“not a being in existence; it’s in our mind. The duende is mysterious; somehow it provokes life. Our brain is responding to it. I am the duende – it isn’t something else outside of me. The duende is something I don’t quite understand – I don’t know the answer; maybe sometimes it’s scary.

The duende lives in you and is awoken by some stimulation. It’s like a hallucination, as it’s not real; it has a presence but only one made by your brain.

At some specific moment, stimulated by a particular coincidence, there is a resonance awoken inside of your brain: there’s something going on.

The duende is hidden inside yourself – in some ways the duende is that thing you don’t completely understand, which exposes new things about you. So, the duende is very much a portrait of you, but not one that you know. The mirror may show you your exterior; your duende might show you more than anything else what you are like inside – that part of you that you don’t know.”

One can use the ‘duende’ to see / discover things about yourself which otherwise are not available.

Duende has doubts with it – it means you are not in control. We are not familiar with it and have not paid attention to it.

It’s a resonance awoken in us on being stimulated by a sight, a sound, a thought, an action….”

~ ALBERTO GARCIA-ALVAREZ (in conversation) November 2024