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Artist Amparo Garrido. /Laura M. Lombardia. CNIO
The audiovisual piece ‘Meditation’, which Amparo Garrido created for CNIO Arte 2023, reflects the artist’s search for silence and nature during a similarly “inner” journey to Extremadura
The CNIO Arte 2023 art project is based on Blackburn’s research on the impact of stress on telomeres. Amparo Garrido measured her telomeres at the start of her journey and will measure them again now.
‘‘Meditation’ will be presented at the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) on 15 February. Blackburn will speak by videoconference from California (USA)
CNIO Arte is the initiative launched five years ago by CNIO to promote art and science, as well as the relationship between both disciplines
This year, CNIO has brought together the Nobel Prize winning researcher who discovered that deeply stressful situations affect the state of telomeres, and an artist who is going through a difficult period in her life. They are Elizabeth Blackburn and Amparo Garrido, who are taking part the 2023 edition of CNIO Arte. The crossing of paths between these two women has given rise to a video piece entitled Meditation, recorded – and experienced– in Extremadura by the artist, who went there “in search of silence, contact with nature, the reduction of stress, contemplation, and ultimately healing”, she says.
Meditation, by Amparo Garrido, will be presented at CNIO (National Cancer Research Centre) on 15 February during the IV Art and Science Symposium (See programme) also organised by CNIO, in which Elizabeth Blackburn will speak by videoconference from California (USA).
As Maria A. Blasco, scientific director of CNIO and executive director of CNIO Arte, explains: “In this edition, we are bringing together the visual artist Amparo Garrido and the molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 2009 for her work on telomeres, structures of our genetic material that determine the life of cells and organisms. Blackburn was the first to demonstrate that perceived stress levels can shorten telomeres and therefore our lives. Garrido contemplates herself through the gaze of the other.”
The curator of CNIO Arte 2023 is the renowned multidisciplinary artist Marina Vargas, who has accompanied Garrido throughout the creative process. Vargas has exhibited at numerous international contemporary art fairs and is the author of the sculpture ‘Intra-Venus’, temporarily on loan to CNIO, exhibited at its entrance.
Maria Blasco: “Art and science share the desire to discover”
Once the audiovisual piece has been presented at CNIO, it will be shown at the International Contemporary Art Fair ARCOmadrid, at CNIO’s stand. CNIO, one of the top ten cancer research centres in the world, has a close relationship with art and has had its own stand at ARCO for years. This connection is thanks to CNIO Arte, the programme launched five years ago by CNIO, with the support of Fundación Banco Santander, to promote the relationship between art and science. Blasco explains why the programme exists: “Art and science share the desire to discover. Discover the outside world or discover ourselves. Without discovery there is no creation either in science or in art. Art illustrates the process or experience of discovery, science becomes an idea, new knowledge. Art and science are our historical legacy to future generations. Both endure and determine our life. Art and science have always gone hand in hand.”
Measuring telomeres as an artistic project
In this 2023 edition, the relationship between art and science goes beyond the creation of a work: it reaches the laboratory. Amparo Garrido decided to measure her own telomeres at the beginning of her project and do it again at the end to see if the experience of meditation influenced their state.
Telomeres are the structures that protect the ends of chromosomes, in the nucleus of each of our cells. Thanks in large part to Blackburn’s research, we now know that they are closely related to health, ageing, and longevity: every time cells divide, their telomeres become shorter, until they are too short. Cells with very short telomeres stop dividing, and as a result the tissues no longer regenerate; the body ages.
Blackburn won the Nobel Prize in 2009 for discovering the nature of telomeres and the enzyme that synthesises them, telomerase. In several of her studies, she found that people subjected to prolonged stress had shorter than average telomeres, and that meditation could help reverse the phenomenon. It is this line of research that has inspired Amparo Garrido.
Amparo Garrido: “An inner journey with challenges, feats, and dangers”
The artist herself explains: “Among Blackburn’s large body of research, I found one study that suited me and my complicated life circumstances very well: it showed that stress shortens telomeres. What was my proposal? First to measure my telomeres, then make the trip to Extremadura. Soon I will re-measure the telomeres to see if I have managed to improve their quality.”
Her trip to Extremadura, first to Monfragüe, in Caceres, and then to Esparragosa de Lares, in Badajoz, was “also an inner journey, a spiritual journey that, like all journeys, had its challenges, feats, and dangers,” Garrido says. “As in the hero’s journey, I had to go through moments of realisation, facing dragons, moments of ecstasy and glimpses of the promised land.”
The video piece Meditation, lasting 12 minutes, was shot in the region of La Siberia, in Badajoz. It is complemented by two photos: Meditation 1 and Meditation 2, taken in Monfragüe, a Biosphere Reserve.
Biography of Amparo Garrido
Amparo Garrido works with photography and video. She has received the ABC Photography Award, the Purificación García Photography Contest Award, and the Junta de Andalucia INICIARTE Award, among others.
Her work is featured in prestigious collections, such as the Reina Sofia Museum, the Comunidad de Madrid Photography Collection, Es Baluard, the Balearic Islands Museum of Contemporary Art, CGAC (Galicia’s Centre for Contemporary Art), and the Fundación Coca-Cola collection, among others.
She has also shown her work through solo exhibitions and has participated in national and international collective exhibitions since 1986.
In 2018, she made her first foray into cinema with her feature film The silence that remains, shown at the Malaga Film Festival 2019; the Torino Film Festival 2019 (Italy); and the O Doxa Documentary Film Festival 2020 (Canada), among others, and was awarded the “Human Ecology Award” at the Suncine Environmental Film Festival, and the Best National Film Award at Ecozine (Spain).