#villa iris

A boat for 17 - 1 and The Dragon Tree, 2012

My work has been developed within a research based-practice, mainly divided among drawing and sculpture. Such investigation is focused on botanical species and their accounts, which are the starting point for my artistic work.

During the workshop I continued to work on an account from a XVI century manuscript, in which it is reported that boats were made from the Dragon Trees trunks. Taking into account an engraving of The Dragon Tree from the XVIII century, I have created an object composed with sectioned origami boats in order to “monumentalize” that aspect

While thinking about boats, I decided to look for a rowing team ( Sociedad Deportiva de Remo Pedreña) where I could make a sound record of one of their practices.

During the workshop we also were a team, maybe not so synchronized. On an attempt to create a connection between the sound recording and our experience as a group in Santander, I started drawing. By looking at them, Lothar challenged me to do the drawing on the wall.

Temporary installation

50 Xeroxs 20x20 cm  (size of each picture 112x112 cm), needles and blu trhead

When you create an image, you are producing an artistic map of a territory. This territory can be part of our subjectivity, our natural world or our cultural environment. But it is always a representation. The map can't be the territory.

This piece tries to interpret the act of shaping our internal and external territory. I use two pictures: the first one is a delicate seascape and the second is a view of the mountains. I divide them in multiple frames, as a sort of de-construction process. The pictures are printed on Xerox, on a very light paper and then they are pinned on two opposite walls. I leave the needles out of the wall, moving each frame of the image towards the head of them.

With this process I want to represent the fragility of our physical and subjective environment, how it is possible to destroy it just with the touch of one hand. The picture/map is distant from the wall to underline the distance between an interpretation and the tangible word, but at the same time it is linked with the territory trough delicate and thin connections such as the needles. In the wall between the two pictures, there is an abstract architecture made with thin light blue thread and needles. It is to show the breakable and often invisible connection between two opposite aspects of the nature such as the sea and the mountain.

The final result is an immersive and light installation, that represent the unstable and fragile connection between our personal visions and our surroundings, between the map and the territory.

Fundacion Botin, Santander, Spain, 2012

This piece is about my state of mind and reflection of it during my stay in Santander. I saw and felt this city as one which is always in transition and therefore unpredictable. I wanted to translate it into a personal and visual journal by choosing the sky as my subject and my thoughts as the text.