01 Sep Maga Esberg
For this edition of the Plan Exposivito 2021 Esberg presents two pieces, both directly responding to her artist’s residency at AADK Spain. ‘Initially, I walked around Blanca, along the river, and up the hills and quickly realised that water was a lifeline for the area bringing food, work, and wealth and without which the land would revert to a desert. Gradually I also became aware of the global human footprint on the landscape.
For ‘NETWORK’ I have used the technique of the Quipu, an ancient Andean recording device made of strings and knots, to re-interpret the ancient irrigation network that has sculpted the landscape of the Valley of the Ricote since Roman times. This piece hints at how conserving and sharing water are currently pressing environmental issues as water scarcity puts pressure on communities and turns a natural resource into a political issue.
‘FOUND’ is a floor-based piece made up of organic and manmade objects collected in and around Blanca. The work aims to playfully raise questions about the human footprint on the environment, to ask what we can do about it and if art is the most useful medium to tackle the issue.’
