Geometric Looking Glass illustrated by Adriana Peliano published by Zahar in 2015

 Comments by Semper Lux*

 

source instagram @semperluxus

This is my *second* post about this metamorphic Brazilian version that transforms Tenniel's illustrations into something entirely new.

This book is a true kaleidoscope, Peliano rearranges the images into ever-changing patterns which lead to new interpretations of the story:

"For each of the two Alice books I developed a different logical strategy: for Looking Glass, I created a game of puzzles that are dismantled & recreated all the time, interacting with Tenniel's original images"

1: Back cover: While Alice looks through the mini-Alice telescope which we saw in Wonderland, the reader is looking inside a large kaleidoscope with rotating images of Red Queen

 

 

2: Alice goes through the prismatic mirror, exchanging the geometry of her world for a completely different one

 

 

3: The jagged prisms of the flowers show their irritation with Alice, an echo of Andersen's Snow Queen, where jagged pieces of a broken mirror brought discord to the world

 

 

4: Inside the kaleidoscope Red Queen leads Alice in an endless race of repeating patterns

 

 

5: Reality & perception shift again when Alice exits the forest with the fawn, who will now perceive Alice as something dangerous

 

 

6: Alice discreetly holds her nose as the wave of odour emanates from the ham sandwich that was kept for too long in Haigha's unrefrigerated bag

 

 

 

7: A geometrical math problem - how to cut the π into 3:14 pieces

 

 

8: Different facets of meaning made visible: everything that White Knight says goes into Alice's one ear, & comes out of the other, quite changed, just like in the Broken Telephone game 

 

 

 

9: A mandala of memories hovers about Alice's head like a halo, a mirror image of Red King's dream earlier in the story

 

 

10: The psychedelic multiplicities of the different facets of Peliano's Looking Glass multiverse

 

 

 

montage: @Semperlux

11: Alice goes through the Golden Arches to meet Tweedledum & Tweedledee. Their uniforms reflect McDonald's colours, their bellies reflect their fondness for Big Macs

12: Walrus & Carpenter are on a huge checkered picnic tablecloth that foreshadows the doom of the poor Oysters

 

 

13: Sheep's shop :

The Egyptian sun-disc of Aten, depicted as the solar disk emitting rays over its worshippers.

The pharaoh Akhenaton had a Hymn to the Sun: "It has been called 'one of the most significant and splendid pieces of poetry to survive from the pre-Homeric world.'"

Other elements in the picture: An upside down pyramid & a kite for reaching the sun 

 

14: Waves of sound burst from the drums, deafening poor Alice like Quasimodo in his noisy belltower in Notre Dame 

 

 

15: The Final Banquet: The ray of light is like the light that hit St Paul on the Road to Damascus, an epiphany that changed the status quo of his world.

 

 

And the prismatic mirror cracks, and reality changes once more, like in Tennyson's poem:

"Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack'd from side to side;

'The curse is come upon me,' cried

       The Lady of Shalott."

Kaleidoscope = "observation of beautiful forms." Just like this book.

 

 

STORIES

 

 

ADRIANA PELIANO, artist and designer, has been working with collage for over twenty years: "I'm a collagist - I mix, displace, & play with Art."

Initially using scissors, glue and various magazines, she also started to incorporate digital art. With curious objects she created assemblages and metamorphoses. 

She did two Masters in Visual Arts, one in England, at the Kent Institute of Art (2002), and another at the University of São Paulo (2012), this one with the dissertation Through Surrealism and What Alice Found There. 

A member of the Lewis Carroll societies of England, the United States and Japan, in 2009 she founded the Lewis Carroll Society of Brazil, of which she is president. 

In 2012 she received the Jabuti award for the graphic design of Alice's Adventures Underground, which she translated together with Myriam Ávila.

Semper Lux is an enigmatic entity, witty collector and presenter of precious and supercalifragilistic illustrated books, with a great  research and full of unsuspected references, who solve some puzzles, and creates many others.

Follow on instagram: @semperluxus