“Before all of this was countryside”
Scene I: You will see a tree in the middle of the road
Adrián Balseca, Paz Encina, Alberto Martín Menacho
September 10 – October 17, 2021
Cycle programmed by Lejos lejos
We leave home together and travel the long, narrow road that leads to the tree. The wind accompanies us, and it smells like jasmine. We venture into the jungle, where ghosts remind us of what we must not forget. With pain, we step onto the sidewalk and find ourselves among holm oaks. The sun beats strongly on the back of our necks, and the dogs are alert. We arrive in my neighborhood, your neighborhood. There are flowers. We approach the tree and fall. We fall into a trench so deep that it takes us back home.
*
“Before all of this was countryside” is an audiovisual cycle composed of two scenes that explore different ways of relating to both rural and urban environments through memory. The first scene takes place between September 10 and October 17; the second, between October 28 and November 20, both in the lower room of Intersticio.
The works presented in the cycle allow us to experience others’ memories as our own, thus opening possibilities for understanding the other. Memory is encoded in the environment: trees and rivers hold memories of childhood, mountains and holm oaks tell legends, and dogs guard ancestral fears.
Plant agency and sensitivity are present in the three films that coexist in the first scene of the cycle: “You will see a tree in the middle of the road.”
The holm oaks preserve collective memory and participate in legends in “Mi amado, las montañas” (2017) by Alberto Martín Menacho (Madrid, 1986). In a small Extremaduran village where his family was born, vultures carry out rituals, inhabitants exchange knowledge across generations, and a young woman embarks on a new, lighter path.
In Paz Encina’s work (Asunción, Paraguay, 1971), the tree becomes a kind of spiritual guardian of memory. Faced with massive deforestation in Paraguay, Paz is concerned with preserving the forest and protecting the communities that inhabit it. “El aroma del viento” (2019) brings together images of the Gran Chaco forest alongside everyday archival images during the Stroessner dictatorship. Dreams intertwine with memories, generating a new family memory contained in the tree.
Dynamics generated by extractivism and its environmental consequences in Latin America are also themes that permeate the work of Adrián Balseca (1989, Quito, Ecuador). Recientemente, Adrián ha presentado su trabajo en la 34 Bienal de São Paulo, que tiene como una de las premisas curatoriales el verso del poeta amazónico Thiago de Mello: Faz escuro, mas eu canto [Está oscuro, pero yo canto], como un llamado a la resistencia en los tiempos oscuros que vivimos, en concreto en el contexto brasileño. The values underlying occupation and violence toward the territory, and the impact of work technification, are issues that Adrián explores in “The Skin of Labour” (2016), configuring a bleak landscape representing a rubber plantation in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Latex collection containers take the form of a hand, a ghostly presence embodying historical labor relations in the region.
We arrive in my neighborhood, your neighborhood. There are flowers. We approach the tree and fall. We fall into a trench so deep that it takes us back home.
Andrea Celda & Elisa Celda
Lejos lejos
