Wolves at the Door

Wolves at the Door. Cosmic Encounters is a proposal by the artist Enrique Marty (Salamanca, 1969) made specifically for the Instituto Cervantes de Manila. It is based on a work in progress that he has been undertaking since 2013, in the form of short video-essays entitled All your world is pointless, in which he condenses his philosophical views on art, the world and humanity; and which serve, in most cases, as studies for a larger work.

Wolves at the Door is the title of Episode VII of All your world is pointless and represents the artist's first foray into volume animation, an artisanal technique that emerged in Eastern Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. The work revolves around the character of the German teenager Kaspar Hauser, an enigmatic figure who appeared in a square in Nuremberg in 1828. Apparently, he could not speak, nor could he stand up. His mental state sparked many hypotheses about his origins. His character was adapted for the big screen in 1974 by Werner Herzog under the title The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, and featured Kidlat Tahimik in his first role as an actor: an indigenous person exhibited as an attraction in a human zoo.

The exhibition is completed with watercolor works that served as a storyboard and the video Cosmic Encounters, a conversation between curator Kristine Guzmán, Enrique Marty and Kidlat Tahimik that took place in Baguio in August 2024. The interview reveals many parallels in the works of the two artists, such as the visibility of the “other."