misc.

earth, as earth // empty hand // all thoughts are prey to some beast

‘All thoughts are prey to some beast’ is the work I made during my residency at Joya: AIR in southern Spain in May 2024.

Joya is located on the border of Sierra de María-Los Vélez Natural Park, a landscape that has distinguishing features, including ‘ramblas’ and huge clay beds.

“The term rambla defines temporary watercourses with specific geomorphological features and is characterized by incised channels with steep banks, a wide channel, and a heterogeneous substrate (blocks, stones, gravel, sand, and silt). In fact, ramblas can be dry for many years and only transport water for a few days as a result of heavy rainfall. Hence, the term ramblas may encompass temporary, ephemeral, and intermittent rivers. These are areas with extreme conditions of high hydrological fluctuations, severe dry periods, and floods.”

I knew that I would be working with local wild clay before arriving at Joya, and my initial idea was to continue a previous clay project of mine but on a larger scale. After foraging and processing the clay (see process here), I wanted to play around with it for a while before starting the actual project. But then, the play became the work itself, as often happens.

Perhaps because there were beautiful wooden rolling pins of all sizes at my disposal, and because I am often intrigued by the tools themselves, I started to make clay discss. Then, I wanted to make them thin. Very thin. I liked the idea that a 'wild' thing is not necessarily rough and difficult to work with; on the contrary, it can be very fragile and flexible. It is my duty to understand its limits and find a balance, without fully imposing myself on it.

After making the discs, I placed them onto some found objects from the land, such as stones, shells, and bones, and let them dry. This raises the question: who is shaping the clay, me or them? I only made the discs. The land made the shapes. Kind of.

On one of my last days, after spending almost two weeks finding the clay, processing it, making the discs, and drying them, I went to the riverbed just to take photos of the places where I collected the clay. While looking through the lens into the deep, dry rift that the powerful water flow of extreme rainfalls created, I realized that it’s all about the curves. I was walking through a huge pale curvy white valley-like sculpture that was sculpted by the water and will be re-sculpted again at a time that nobody knows exactly.

While driving back home from the airport, on my favorite part of the drive which is quite winding and uphill, that song randomly came up on the shuffle play of my driving playlist: ‘all thoughts are prey to some beast’. I thought: exactly. Thoughts are to be shattered, so are ideas and plans, just like how I was absorbed by the landscape, the outside, the stranger, by the ‘wild’, and I did what I felt like I had to do instead of what I was carrying inside my mind. The wild that has the power of cutting the land, opening it up, and shaping an immense amount of mass was the beast, and I was the prey. Although the song portrays ‘the beast’ as grim, I prefer to use it in a more joyful sense. I love the beast.