Very worthy of note throughout the career of this artist has been the constant concern for the human entity related to culture, where the social is combined with that spirit that hides behind the cultural development of peoples. A constant reference in her work has been her book; a book that is the axis of everything; container and content, absence and presence; intimate duality that makes us cross paths where the essence of everything circulates. The book in Aixa’s work is a railway junction where the train of knowledge stops, that which contains reality itself and that which is not. Books like silent temples sheltering a universe of sensations, emotions, roots that support the nature of existence, that which unifies the old cultural unity and opens the unpredictable horizons of truth.

In the successive works and series of this artist –Poiesis, The Roots of Flight, Glyphs Natura, Raíz Pajaro and Piedra Raíz, among others– one finds the genesis of an artistic consciousness that is not limited to the successful expression of an aesthetic reality and but it is found in a universe of truths, those that keep in suspense a creation based on a very well thought out concept from a cultured, meditated position, based on knowledge, experience and the existential development of a committed life.

I have always been interested in the work of Aixa Portero, that step forward that is appreciated because her pieces are not mere representative situations but rather, with many successful compositional registers, envelop the viewer in a commitment that makes them intervene and become an accomplice of the intention of the artist. In addition, her work has such a broad and ecumenical spirit that it commands general interest and understanding. Thus, in Belarus, where she was the first Spaniard to exhibit at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in that country; now in Malaga, with this exhibition that will turn the spaces of La Coracha into a wide stage where the vast and passionate iconography of Aixa is present so that the expectant soul of the observer is pinched by that mediate wink that each work poses; or, in the Alhambra, where she has been invited by exception to the magical spaces that house the history and the spell of that mythical Granada that remained eternally, so that her scrutinizing, brave and unique gaze rescues all the essence that there takes shelter, Aixa’s work subscribes to a content cry of life; a beautiful song of peace for the world, a melodious song with lyrics – its pieces, its sculptures, its installations, those forests full of books or those birds that enclose a particular mythology are nothing more than beautiful artistic poems – that describe peace, the world, culture, the human being, existence.

As I wrote not long ago referring to the work of this artist, I can only end with those words: “When art and life maintain conflicting dialectics, when society permanently suggests questionable states, Aixa Portero’s work opens up beautiful perspectives that they keep dreaming”.

Bernardo Palomo