On a hot and sticky afternoon in July, I went to Maya’s studio with Javi to see the process that would eventually give rise to the exhibition we can now see at El Chico. As soon as the visit began, she apologised for not yet being able to articulate in words everything we were looking at together. There was something about those pieces that seemed to call for another way of approaching them. At first glance, a cluster of gestures emerged as tentative, undefined attempts, charged with hunches and suspicions. A hand that scratches, grasps, combs; something that coils, something that hangs, something that opens and closes, something that conceals and reveals.

Maya started telling me about the gum rockrose. I love it when stories have flowers and plants as almost central protagonists, in the recurring manner of Greco-Roman myths or folk tales from different cultures. Maya looks at the rockrose and, through her attention to it, shares with me the intuitions that have taken her from one…