Lectura Fragmentada is a numbered work created by intervening in copies of the first series of C International Photo Magazine, a photography magazine published by Ivorypress between 2005 and 2010. Cuban artist Glenda León transforms this publication by cutting a triangular slice from each volume, as if it was a cake, and served onto a plate. This work evokes a passion and an appetite for books and at the same time brings to the fore the way in which we sometimes focus only on certain parts of a book: paragraphs, passages, pages…
Sometimes we only recall a small section of a book, be it a good sentence, a concept or a sensation that we receive from it’ and it is this metaphor that is central to the work. In the words of the artist, ‘when you think about it, it is rarely the book in its totality that is remembered—the word-for- word memorization of its content—but rather, a fragment of the book that stays with us.
There are two different versions of León’s Lectura Fragmentada. The first is an edition of two and one artist’s proof, composed of each of the two volumes of the first series of C Photo, presented individually with a slice of the book cut out and placed on a plate, both elements contained within a plastic cake caddy. The second version is a single edition that comprises whole cake made up of ten portions that correspond to each of the ten volumes of C Photo, presented on a glass cake stand covered by a dome.
