The exhibition Infierno ciego (Blind hell) is a journey through the landscape of a familiar world. As is habitual with Montserrat Soto’s work, we encounter a series of photographs of dream-like, allegorical or real landscapes that hold meaning, and which are the horizons of a pathway explored and remembered. Dante places them in hell; Montserrat Soto in the contemporary world. The fears are the same; the places familiar or similar. The people inhabiting them are different, but their thoughts are mirrored by their surroundings.

Blind hell is a path that Soto embarked upon inspired by a reading of Dante’s Inferno. Yet this particular journey and landscape are outlined by Jorge Luis Borges, who cited The Divine Comedy as a staple in his literary diet, and whose words, published posthumously by Le Monde Diplomatique in 2011, influenced Montserrat Soto.

Question: Are you also able to feel a landscape? Do you perceive it through the vibrations of voices too?

J.L. Borges’s answer: Which I suspect can seem rather anachronistic. I do refer back to impressions I keep from when I could still see. Now, if I close one eye, I can picture certain colours, in particular green and blue. I have never lost the ability to see yellow; but black, yes. Darkness is lacking. Strange, isn’t it? A blind man deprived of darkness. Even asleep I find myself in a haze of bluish green.

Inspired by these words, Soto decides to revisit the path; to overcome the symbolism of the power of colour and penetrate these landscapes devoid of blacks and reds; leave behind imagined reality and enter a place – through Dante’s gate – and which to do so, means to abandon all hope.