ZARZAR bears an echo of the rose bush (zarzal), but it is also the verb of the bramble (zarzar). To entangle, to embroil, to intertwine. It is also thorning, defending oneself with prickles. The hook-shaped stems are strokes that form letters. The words are hidden in the weeds of more words, they are illegible. In the rose bush fantasy, an emotional diagnostic test of Gestalt psychotherapy, the description of the rose bush reveals hidden characteristics of the subject that are concealed in the conventions of language. Words, which are the same for everyone, become drawings of individual personality, perhaps normative, perhaps pathological, when interpreted under clinical parameters. Behind words, we hide and reveal ourselves in equal parts. In children, language is imitation but it takes on the appearance of emerging from within. The more it is constructed, the more an individuality is outlined, as if modeling itself in the chosen words and crystallizing in its sequence. Language is convention and constraint, at the same time as it is a place of will, unfolding between the one who enunciates, and the voice that appears in what is said. In the written letter, the sign arises, which is also a form in and of itself. And in the delineation of the form, interpretable variables emerge about the uniqueness of the person who signs it. Faced with the confusion of the entanglement, we ask ourselves whether we are supposed to read it or see it as a plant; whether it is letter or branch, nature or language. 

The zarzar rises in the middle of the space and in front of the wall adjacent to the cemetery. Houses in small towns have names, named after the families who built them even if ownership changes over time. Traditionally, house windows are protected with flat iron bars in the shape of a spike. Imitating the stem, the fence that prevents penetration represents the natural protection of vegetation. This house, called the old blacksmith's house and protected with metal spikes, was missing the distinctive name that presides over the entrance of the other houses in town, all forged by the new blacksmith. Sahatsa arrives, informed by her family connection to the craft of iron axes, and positions herself at this particular intersection between nature as a formal reference for functionality, the act of naming, and the void left by the new blacksmith. The work and exhibition space marks the reconstructed character of the house in this new stage: Spiritvessel is a receptacle, a vehicle of the spirit; channel of neighboring recumbent souls, and living ones who make. Making a name activates the artist's project, which ends up becoming both matter and action. 

-Sira Pizà

Sahatsa Jauregi lives and works in Bilbao. She has recently shown her work in solo presentations at Azkuna Zentroa, Espacio Artiatx and Carreras Múgica in Bilbao, and Halfhouse in Barcelona. She has been part of duo and group exhibitions at Bapore Atelier, Fran Reus Gallery, The Ryder Gallery, The Goma Gallery, Tabakalera and Sala Rekalde, among others. She has been awarded the ARCO 2023 Prize and her work is part of collections such as the Artium Compartida Collection or the Kutxa Foundation. She is also a professor at the University of the Basque Country UPV-EHU. She is currently represented by The Ryder Projects in Madrid and ATM in Gijón.

All images by Roberto Ruiz. Courtesy of the artist and Spiritvessel.