Twenty-five boxes of collectivised earth, 2019

Iron, earth, vinyl lettering
Unit box: 25 x 30 x 4,5 cm.
Installation dimensions: 255 x 124 cm.

This installation is made up of twenty-five boxes of land from twenty-five villages in Aragon that were collectivised by groups of peasants and militiamen, mostly anarchists, during the Civil War. The confiscation and occupation of land from landowners took place in the first two years of the war, as the anarchist columns advanced. Two hundred and seventy-five agrarian collectives were created in Aragon alone.

The earthen boxes, with different shades of ochre, sienna and brown that evoke a Pantone colour chart or the tablets in a box of watercolours, recall a revolutionary past in which the poor took power by subverting the established order. If the past continues to exist in the present and reveals to us, as Walter Benjamin said, a secret pact that links us to the injustices suffered by past generations, what revolutionary potential do these lands hide, what new landscapes can be painted with them?

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Exhibition:
Theoretics of bread
Rosa Santos Gallery. Valencia. From 20 September to 22 November 2019.