︎︎︎ EL JARDÍN DE TODO. [GARDEN OF EVERYTHING]
May to december 2023
For this version we wanted to move away from the traditional research and reproduction of the idea of nature in the city and its relation to artistic practices, to take it to more conceptual and political limits. This is the reason why we invited the artists to carry out an investigation and production of work derived from our work called ‘Jardín de las Malas Hierbas’ (The Bad Herbs Garden). A sort of extension and reinterpretation from the own aesthetic proposals of Coco Guzmán (ESP), Diego del Pozo (ESP) and Estefanía Santiago (ARG), to account for a set of dialogues and reciprocities between our collective and our guests.
The artists carried out a research for the production of the work, which ended in December. Each process, in addition to its own result, included an intermediate intervention in the public space.
Mi vida como una mala hierba. Coco Guzmán* [My live as a bad herb]
The artist produced an ever unfinished fanzine/poster project that traces the connections between the weeds that we are and those that grow in the streets of our cities, defending our right to squat and exist in space unabashedly. Transgender, glamorous panki and envious of all the thistles of the wastelands of Vallekas, the risographed pages collect the chaotic catastrophes of the everyday that vindicate the weed and the ‘mistake’ against the smooth and sanitised urbanism of the normative discourse. Between snails and dandelions, police cars crash, someone drops the last cup of coffee on the planet, Palestine is bombed, bodies unroll to reveal themselves and the houses we will never be able to inhabit burn.
The Weeds we are and will be take these and a thousand other forms. Palestine will be Free.
Printed by the wonderful riso RZ 200 ep, who with her ink drums gave rhythm to the printing of each sheet.
*Coco Guzmán (ESP) is a queer artist who investigates liminal and latent histories that emerge from contexts of political violence, using drawing and installation. Since he was a child, Coco has been drawing on the floor, which explains why he can't sit properly at the table and loves to doodle on the walls. The daughter of biologists, she grew up in a house full of cacti where weeds were always welcome. You can currently visit his works at Intermediae Matadero Madrid, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bolonia, Arsenal in Havana and many public toilets around the world.https://www.cocoriot.com/
La escucha de un tallo. Estefanía Santiago* [Listening to a stem]
This project continues the line of research developed by the artist in ‘Taking the form of a bird is a form of desire’. The piece (video performance + installation) takes elements from the Argentinean popular carnival (littoral region), to construct an affective encounter from the artistic practice; and to reflect on migration and the ecological and community problems that certain movements of appropriation entail, which begin with colonialism and the modern western world-system.
For GARDEN OF EVERYTHING, we researched the black branch (conyza bonariensis), a plant that is considered to have arrived from Buenos Aires to Europe through the importation of wool in the 18th century, and which is currently catalogued as a weed and invasive. At the same time, Argentina is studying the plant's resistance to glyphosate, a herbicide (banned in Europe because of its poisonous potency), which is used on fields before sowing and is one of the main causes of cancer in the coastal region.
The artist created costumes and an experimental video piece that contains the intervention with the costumes in the lots of Vallecas.
*Estefanía Santiago (ARG) is an artist of hybrid practices. She has a degree and teaches Audiovisual Communication (Universidad Nacional de La Plata).
Documentary and Artistic Photography (Talent Scholarship, TAI - URJC, Spain), Master in Artistic Professions (Acciona Scholarship, Escuela Sur - UC3M, Spain).
She obtained the individual Arts and Education Grant from the Miró Mallorca Foundation (2021), from the Argentinean Ministry of Culture Activar Patrimonio (2020) and from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2014); and the PAR (2019) and Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2019 - 2021) grants with the collective MUCA. He participated in the residencies Nido Errante, Encontro de Artistas Novos, Residencia Cantera-Tabacalera, El Cortijo, Ababol, among others. His work has been part of numerous solo and group exhibitions, festivals and congresses in countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Denmark and Turkey. He is currently a member of the MUCA collective and the Red Políticas y Estéticas de la Memoria.
http://estefaniasantiago.com/
Ramas de hoy. Diego del Pozo* [Today´s branches]
The neighbourhood movements in Madrid and many other cities between the 1970s and the 1990s were crucial in constructing an idea of the city that would give meaning to the new transformations with the return to democracy.
For the project Jardín de Todo (Garden of Everything), a first poster of a series of pieces is presented, based on poetic interpretations of photographs found in the archives of neighbourhood associations and loaned by the Federación Regional Neighbourhood Associations of Madrid FRAVM.
This first poster with a collage of drawings and photos shows actions over several decades linked to strategies carried out by the neighbourhood movement to reclaim green spaces and coexistence with other forms of nature.
They are mobilisations, celebrations and demonstrations linked to the planting of trees, the creation of gardens and the trees, the creation of allotments and garden areas without permits on the plots of land in these neighbourhoods, since the various town councils did not do so in their urban and environmental policies. At the same time, these precarious but beautiful gardens were also a response to slow down certain processes of real estate speculation that were gradually imposed on us over the last forty years.The poster has also been conceived to support other drawings, shadows, silhouettes and hands that support and care for plants such as those that can be enjoyed in the Garden of the Space of Everything.
*Diego del Pozo (ESP) was born in Valladolid and lives in Madrid. He is an artist and lecturer in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the USAL. He is also a member of the art collectives C.A.S.S.I.T.A., Subtramas and Declinación Magnética. In 2019 he was awarded the Leonardo BBVA Grant. He has realised and participated in numerous exhibitions and programmes in national and international contemporary art centres and museums such as Havana Biennial, Central American Biennial, South Biennial, Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, MACBA in Barcelona, Jeu de Paume or Centre George Pompidou in Paris, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, and others. His works of art can be found in collections such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid; CA2M in Móstoles; IVAM in Valencia; MUSAC in León; CDAN in Huesca; Domus Artium 2002 in Salamanca (DA2). He is mobilised by emotions, affective economies (of hate, fear...), questions of contact and contagion, processes that question established identity structures, the possibility of imagining other bodies, other subjectivities and other ways of being in the world. She finds many motivations in the crossovers between feminist, queer, intersectionality and scientific thought.
https://www.museoreinasofia.es/coleccion/obra/porvenir-revuelta-diagrama