The first step followed a premise: the collection of soil, handed by people living in Argentine territory. I start from the contact with human beings and the contact with the lands, respective mothers of the inhabitants of each place (mixed race groups, indigenous people, immigrants). When I begin with the collection trips, I travel not only geographical but also social and economic distances of the marginal cultures. It is all about human journeys for the recognition of those cultures; dimensions in which man, landscape and culture are deeply and closely mingled.
By the act of collecting, I am trying to conciliate, connect and join social, regional, ethnic and linguistic diversity; to go beyond fragmentation. No exclusion. I call for the re-creation of the feeling of nation, community, collective identity and common will. Once I return to my workshop with the soil, I process it and include it in my work. I make paper, engrave maps with soil and include the soil itself as a dynamic element in glass boxes, in an installation or in an artist book.
Regarding the land, I present the maps of the places I have visited, stories and pictures of the people I have interviewed and word chains regarding this concept. Stories, words, actions and cartography take special significance in the current multicultural complexity. In all cultures, the land offers the possibility of becoming rooted, the crucial alternative to establish and develop identity, it is the linking element with everyday life; it is the existential ground. My aesthetic proposal is focused on the creation of an active reflective space that is in tension because of the controversial dialogue between the past and the present, because of the desperate need of the restitution of memory. A space opened to lost myths, massacred legends and the painful subjugation of cultures. An atmosphere where it is possible to establish links between the diversity of regions, cultures, races and nations.
I am trying to outline a future. A future where I would like to build an ideological atmosphere of unity.
