Sulla Palude, 2019

  • Maria M. Vila

"'Sulla Palude' documents a series of acts made in a swamp on the outskirts of Barcelona, where nature blends with the city. While the artist reconnects with a place of her childhood, she carries out respectful acts of love towards the demised swamp in the shape of offerings. Throughout the recurring visits in the period of four months, people were invited to participate to the ritual and stimulated to share ideas around their relationship towards the environment and the need to perform subtle gestures of care." Carolina Ciuti The title references Italian film 'Cielo Sulla Palude', 1949, by Augusto Genina, an illustration of the life of Saint Maria Goretti. A story where spatial context is a main influence to the character, who's struggle is accentuated by the ambient inhabited. Understanding the environment as a living organism, I practice in it a sensible approach by growing affective links with the elements that shape it, in a desire to love and belong. ‘Sulla Palude’ is set in a space of swampy waters in the middle of Collserola mountain range, in the outskirts of Barcelona. Becoming a usual walker of that space, during the period of four months, I contemplated the coexistence between its inhabitants and its visitors: observing that the connecting element was always the water, and that the act of contact that all practised was the one of throwing, pouring or leaving in it all kinds of unwanted elements as a turtle, a fish, a glass, a plastic... The swamp had become a sort of dump or cemetery for rejected beings, who, once left there, would create an environment of their own. Seeing this and wanting to participate in that sort of involuntary experiment, I decided to re-enact the visitors but this time offering flowers, stones and branches I would find around the waters, adopting the ritual of the act of offering, in a healing way. During those four months I invited participants from the city to do the same, creating spaces and moments of conversation where we would talk about our current relationship with our habitat, in a conscious proposal of a growth of respect and love towards a mistreated ambient. The participants: Mary Szydlowska, Carolina Ciuti, Beatriz Rossell, Ana Ayuso, Pablo de Pastors, Clara Martínez, Anna Vila, Modest Ferrer, Atalanta Dickinson, Carme Cases, Jodie Chinn, Joshua Perkin and Carolina Spencer. The work was part of group exhibition at Fabra i Coats - Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, June 2019. And has been part of Cinéphémère film programme, for the third collaboration with LOOP, a selection made by Carolina Ciuti, Curator and Crib collective member, at FIAC Paris, Saturday 19 October, 2019. HD video, color, sound Edition 5 of 5 20 min