What naughty girl dares to colour photographs when grown ups have said over and again that you mustn't paint photographs? Who has poured a coloured wash over the cold silver of reality? The child, says Handke, does not know that he is a child and squatting down has no opinion about things. "The child's foot," Neruda tells us "does not yet know that it is a foot / and it wants to be a butterfly or an apple." Or a pomegranate, like the one the Virgin holds in her left hand, with the baby on her lap, looking in fascination at the smooth fruit. The child looks at the pomegranate in amazement. Is it the forbidden fruit of Persephone, the face of guilt? Is it fertility, which the child recognises in his mother's hand? Beneath the tiny crown of the fruit, under its thick, protective skin, countless rubies are tightly packed in the shelter of an apparent wholeness. They are waiting for their beauty to pour from the wound, as so much treasure would rot if it remained inside. It is just a matter of time. Meanwhile, in another place which could be the same, another girl with golden hair, a linen nightgown slipping off her shoulder, gazes thoughtfully at something, by the weak light of a candle which defines her sharp features. She does not need a pomegranate pregnant with hidden rubies, or bare branches pointing to the sky, to see herself, full of power. Everything is possible with that innocent gaze, within the childhood she has recovered. The candle burns down slowly, and meanwhile a thousand things happen, while others remain lit for ever. The seeds germinate, the old foliage is tinged with green again, the pomegranate is opened and stains a cheek. We make a thousand turns in the flowery spiral of life, and, going forward, we move on without going back, while time, which once made us adults, which cut so many spring flowers, will finally lose its old strength. The sun sends forth a great warmth, as it did yesterday, as it always has, and life begins anew at every moment. So, it is not by chance that Ouka Leele means and says, in a language that some can hear, "go right round the circle".

JOSÉ SABORIT: “Dándole vueltas al círculo”, Dones en l´Andana. Geles Mit & Ouka Lele, Generalitat Valenciana, 1999, pp. 59-63 (catalogue)