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Statement of Intent / Artist Statement
Overcoming grief through repetitive and familiar mechanics.

When a loved one dies, you have to start all over again. Figuring how to pull yourself together becomes the first step towards a new life. Starting to cope becomes the first moves towards a new life.

Limoncico:

m. Fruit of the lemon tree, ovoid in shape, about ten centimetres along the major axis and about six centimetres along the minor axis, with a protruding nipple at the base, a smooth, wrinkled or furrowed rind depending on the variety, often yellow in colour, and a yellowish pulp divided into segments, which are edible, juicy and acidic in taste.

The lemon is a citrus fruit, belonging to the bitter group. What is bitter is hardly accessible, a punishment or a suffering. The Spanish idiom “to chew the bitter ones" means to hide one's annoyance.

The lemon tree is green and flowery, it symbolises life and balance.

At the beginning of 2021 my grandmother passed away. A bit later into the year, my uncle followed her. My whole family and I gathered at the mortuary in Santomera, a town located in Murcia. It was a bitter reunion: we were surrounded by lemon trees, which are common in the region of Murcia and even more so right in the middle of the orchard of Santomera. The first time we were there, my father began to pick the lemons that were peeping through the gates of the mortuary since they were needed to prepare our meal, and we all joined him in this act of harvesting. The second time, there was no need to say anything. My father took out a bag he had in the car and the rest of us knew what we had to do: to pick lemons.

Bio
Isi Cano is a PhD in research in Contemporary Art. Their work consists of the use of video games in elementary school classrooms to learn about the artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century. They also teach video game development, multimedia design and robotics at a school in Madrid (Spain) and at The Core School, a higher school of audiovisuals. They are a member of the committee of FemDevs, an association of women and non-binary video game developers. They are also the creator of the project Baba is Cool, a compilation of levels for the independent video game Baba is You (2019) developed by students aged 10 to 12.

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