26 Apr Carlos Cartama
Residency Programme: May 2016
Phoenix dactylifera
Cartama installs the trunk of a 120-year-old palm tree; sectioned in four parts, and horizontally arranged on 20 trestles. The palm tree was collected from a site where it was already cut down. The lower fragment of the trunk, which was still rooted, was uprooted from the earth and moved, with the rest of the pieces, in a truck to be exhibited in Cartagena in front of the ruins of the Roman Forum. After its exhibition it was retired to the municipal landfill.
In a city full of archaeological sites and heritage buildings, the presence of this lying body confronts our violent relationship with the natural environment and questions the conventional criteria for heritage conservation. On the other hand, he questions the value of the work of art, which one day carries its auratic splendor, and the next is waste material.
The miraculous natural architecture of the date palms slowly disappears from the Mediterranean horizon due to the plague of the weevil. These palms have not escaped the fate imposed by a society where the non-productive is neglected. The area also suffers from a strong process of desertification, while proliferating a landscape that responds to an Orientalist ideal of recreating exotic environments.
((From Mirage and Dystopia))
