Miradas fragmentarias

la écfrasis en dos cuentos de Laia Jufresa

Abstract

This article analyses two stories from the book El esquinista (2014) by Mexican author Laia Jufresa, based on their ecphrastic textual frameworks: “Cristina” and “La noche que desapareció Holanda”. The first story focuses on the work Christina’s World by the American painter Andrew Wyeth. The second contains several references to the works by Johannes Vermeer: Woman Holding a Balance and Young Woman with a Lute. In both texts Jufresa creates an inter-artistic space where literature and painting meet and interfere. In these experimental stories the narrator changes the perspective, both the perspective with which she observes a painting and the inner perspective, which observes the most intimate reflections of the characters. Jufresa’s approach to universal themes puts the reader in an uncomfortable space, but at the same time she encourages him or her to participate in the game of the visible and the invisible.