“From Sketchbooks to Soundscapes…
With a blended background in art, writing and music, Mexican poet Manuel Polin crafts audiovisual experiences accented by melancholy and enigma. Through a mediation of Latin American folk, he reimagines music, imagery and words by conjuring lo-fi soundscapes that prompt introspective spiritual explorations.
Manuel moved from his home in Mexico City to Europe at seventeen. Guided by his lifelong affection for French poetry, he pursued writing in the literary scenes of London and Paris, before studying “Arts, Communication et Langage” at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis in the South of France. As a student, he began his music practice collaborating with other local musicians; together, their band played in the streets, old towns and old squares of iconic European cities.
He settled in Côte d’Azur as a musician, focussing on guitar and vocals and performing globally at private events. His multidisciplinary practice has since evolved through his study of the spiritual teachings from Judaism and Christianity, the poetic lyricism of musicians like Leonard Cohen, and the magical realism of Latin American writers like Gabriel García Márquez. The pandemic years stirred Manuel to desire a more public outcome of his acoustic and organic sounds with poetry as a driving force. A debut EP, a visual experience called ‘Llanto Santo,’ honoured this shift and marked this next stage of his creative process. As a poetry sketchbook designed in collaboration with producer Noah Georgeson and artist David Herbrechter, the otherworldly release revels in Manuel’s emotional imagery and literary influences.
With a timeless aesthetic, Manuel offers a pensive remembering of the Mexico of his grandparents’ day, the country’s black and white 1940-50s cinematography, and the hypnotic landscapes of its Altiplano Region. This vision of his possesses a cryptic yet ambient rhythm that blurs reality with the supernatural.