For Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz Fisac, traveling means “learning, getting excited and living with other cultures that make you aware that what is essential and most intimate is something common in all corners of the planet.”
She, as a United Nations diplomat and, later, as an art curator, has had the opportunity to get to know exceptional places and people. Artists such as Ai Weiwei, Damien Hirst, Robert Rauschenberg, Botero and Balthus. Stars like Sting, Bono, Stevie Wonder and great characters, like María Kodama and Manolo Blahnik, both the subject of two of the twelve books that she has published in some of the most prestigious publishers in the world.
Now he has made his debut in the novel with A Kiss in Tokyo (La Huerta Grande), a story set in the universe of art and where the trip becomes a vehicle to rediscover oneself and, why not?, get rid of demons.
This is what happens to its protagonist, Kengo Ōe, an internationally renowned Japanese architect (transcript of his admired Tadao Ando), who, at the peak of his career, decides to break with everything to find the lost harmony. This decision will take her on an emotional journey through places such as the art island of Naoshima, in Japan, China, New York, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Dubai and Zimbabwe, which have also been part of the author's life journey.
Does this novel arise from a trip?
I have been to Japan, a country that fascinates me, several times. There I met, in 2005, Tadao Ando, one of the most important architects in the world: a great humanist who did not study architecture, but won the Pritzker Prize. A man who was a boxer and compared the tension of this discipline with that necessary to be a good architect. I was so impressed by his way of being and what he told me that it was the initial stimulus to write this book.
Why A Kiss in Tokyo?
The title is almost a challenge: first, because in Tokyo no one is going to kiss you in public! But, although that Japanese spirit of calm, beauty, refinement, and respect for others is there, it is not a book about Japan. Yes, these values served as a common thread for me and, wherever he is, the protagonist is going to behave with them.
Its protagonist undertakes a journey through very diverse places in the world. I imagine you know them well...
Yes, of course, they are places where I have been for long periods, because to make the character travel and reflect on these destinations I had to have in-depth knowledge. In some, like New York, I have lived. In others, I have worked: in Iran, Zimbabwe, Abu Dhabi... I know them first hand.
You have said that architecture is the most important art: what would be the most architecturally harmonious country to visit?
All the architects I have spoken to say that the cradle is Italy. I think Italy is a great architectural monument, although of course there are fantastic buildings in many countries around the world. But the great reference is Italy. Tadao Ando, who could not study architecture academically, decided to visit the great monuments, to understand what and how the masters of the past had built. And the first thing he did was go to Rome, to see the Pantheon.
The book is defined as “an emotional journey throughout the world.” How do you travel?
I think you have to travel with curiosity, trying to look with new eyes, letting yourself be surprised; A good traveler should also try to study beforehand what he is going to see. If there's something I can't stand, it's those selfie-filled trips; It seems that it doesn't matter where you are, the important thing is the photo. I believe that this phenomenon would have another name: it is not traveling, at least as I understand it.
His character says that the 21st century is in mourning for beauty... Where could we find it, still?
I think that beauty is something that moves you deeply, something that you recognize when you see it, that even disturbs you, that really changes you. It can be in a kind gesture, in a smile, in a way of looking, in a beam of light, the waves of the sea... It is in everything that surrounds us, but we have to know how to see it. As one of my characters in the book, the philosopher Lin Yutang, says: "Half of beauty depends on the landscape and the other half on the man who looks at it." That is to say: if you want to see it, you will find it.
