Zaida del Rio
Pais Magico. Magic Country, 2009
Matanzas, Cuba: Ediciones Vigía
One of 200 copies.
2114
Quarto. 31pp. Surrealist imagery throughout is hand-touched with color - an approach to illustration which by the 21st century had become the hallmark of Cuba's most recognizable publisher of artist's...
Quarto. 31pp. Surrealist imagery throughout is hand-touched with color - an approach to illustration which by the 21st century had become the hallmark of Cuba's most recognizable publisher of artist's books. Ediciones Vigía, which has operated since the end of Fidel Castro's Special Period, uses an array of materials ready to hand, creating books that bring durability and ephemerality into concert. Here, del Rio's poems - homages to the complicated and fragile environments of Cuba printed in both Spanish and English - are bound in stiff cardstock covered with crinkled white paper, with illustrated and hand-touched paper onlays. A running band of stiff and hand-stained cardstock wraps around the book and is held in place by a wood skewer. One figure pasted to band has head missing, else a fine example of the press's more contemporary output.


