Title: Urizen's dream
Series URIZEN (2023)
Year: 2023
Size: Variable
Technique: Photography, Digital Art

The Series URIZEN takes its name from the character Urizen in Blake's mythology, who represents alienated reason as the source of oppression. Blake's invented mythology describes Urizen as “Creator of Men”, a god of immense power who invented a repressive web of laws and religion based on reason. Urizen is always represented as a bearded old man, who sometimes carries books of divine law and measuring instruments to create and constrain the universe, architect's tools with which to create but also limit the universe.

Viviente's Urizen (2023) is represented as a female painter. This personification of Urizen as a woman explores the forgotten balance between history and gender, a main topic in Viviente's artistic research. The Urizen woman is sitting and has a tool or instrument in her hand on a background of canvases and paintings. As in the compass of Blake's Urizen, according to the explanations, "is more than an instrument of wisdom and measurement, coming to be a kind of symbol of a lightning bolt capable of illuminating a world plunged into a state of night dark and stormy". The colors of the Urizen woman are those of the lightning, red, lilac, yellow, green, fuchsia, orange, pink, vivid colors, full of strength and dynamism. Like Pop art is characterized by vibrant, bright colors.

The focus on Urizen emphasizes the chains of reason that are imposed on the mind. Urizen, like mankind, is bound by these chains. But the focus on Urizen also reminds us of the necessity and benefits of imagination. For Blake, Urizen's laws limited energy and crushed the imagination. He believed in the power of the imagination, he also believed in the spirit of revolution and freedom. The Urizen woman too. She embodies these concepts in a sort of contemporary allegory.