Primary Sector
16 May 2015 - 17 Jan 2016
PRIMARY SECTOR
Paco Algaba, Alfonso Borragán, Álvaro Laiz, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Javier Riera, Antje Schiffers
16 May 2015 - 17 January 2016
Curatorship: Manuel Olveira
Coordination: Carlos Ordás
The sector of work and economic production known as primary sector consists of activities associated with the transformation of natural resources into minimally processed primary products, which tend to be the basis of the raw materials used by the secondary sector. This sector has been very important in Castile and Leon and agriculture, livestock, forestry, beekeeping, aquaculture, hunting and mining have been traditionally practiced in the region.
Together with it, the Castile and Leon community has an important hydrographic network and nature reserves, is home to a large number of lakes, ponds and, especially, reservoirs, and the geological configuration has allowed for various sources of thermal or mineral and medicinal water. The Mountains of Valsaín and Sierra de Francia in the Central System, the valleys of Laciana, Omaña and Luna, and the Picos de Europa and Los Ancares, forming part of the Cantabrian mountains, have been declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO and, in addition, Castile and Leon is strongly related to two of the records in UNESCO"s Memory of the World programme: the Decreta of Leon of 1188, and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494.
This brief description illustrates the close traditional ties with the primary sector that are being lost as a consequence of rural migration, particularly after the Civil War. During the decades of the 1960s and 1980s, the major urban centres and provincial capitals experienced a slight population increase due to a thorough process of urbanization, but in general the Castilian and Leonese area, and especially the rural world, continues to have a serious depopulation problem and is seeing an abandonment of the primary sector. For all these reasons, MUSAC organizes an exhibition that aims to attend to the importance and presence of the landscape, agriculture and livestock, hunting, mining, etc., in this community through the work of a number of contemporary artists. On the one hand, it “documents” the change of economic paradigm that has made "inviable" some areas of the primary sector, but, on the other, highlights some of these activities, because they have an essential and undeniable value.
From the art and culture perspective, but also from the point of view of economy and society, this exhibition and the set of activities that accompany and complete it emphasise work located in the rural environment, regional balance, as well as the economic, cultural and human importance of the activities of the primary sector.
Throughout her career, Antje Schiffers (Heiligendorf, Germany, 1967) has developed a very consistent body of work and line of research related to various aspects of rural and "traditional" economies as places of cultural production. Schiffers places emphasis on contact, exchange, dialogue and cultural negotiation that allows a wider scope in relation to the opportunity and relevance of economic and/or cultural peripheries. To do this, this year the artist has produced in Jabares de los Oteros, together with the Blanco family, a new film belonging to the series she begun in 2007 Ich bin gerne Bauer und möchte es auch gerne bleiben, and a huge installation made up of straw bales that constitutes a space for meetings and presentations or auditorium called International Schnaps Bar. The sign for this space has been designed by the artist in collaboration with the school of art and conservation and restoration of Leon, based on the old stained glass windows that have left such a mark in the city since its installation in the Cathedral of Leon.
The work of Asunción Molinos Gordo (Aranda de Duero, Burgos, 1979) focuses on the social, political, economic and cultural implications of agriculture and food, exploring the rural sphere and the living conditions of the peasantry through the popular imaginary, the territory and the landscape. Without nostalgia, her proposals discuss the structural changes taking place in the countryside due to the regulations promoted by the EEC and encouraged by the big food companies. In 2010 she developed her project WAM (World Agricultural Museum) in Egypt, which will be presented in September in various facilities of the Sierra Pambley Foundation of Leon. It is an installation that reproduces the atmosphere and the visual language of the ancient Agriculture Museum in Cairo, coupled with contemporary discourses on the genetic engineering of food, intellectual property over seeds and the controversy of terms such as "food security". In addition, for the exhibition at MUSAC she has also produced the work Curriculum Vitae et Studiorum, a text that uses the pompous language of academia to describe the cultural and intellectual life of the peasants.
The Leonese photographer Álvaro Laiz (León, 1981) produces photographic reports and artistic projects focused on certain realities that have little visibility both in the media and in conventional shows. His work has been mainly developed in Africa, Asia and South America, in collaboration with various foundations and NGOs, to offer us images about the different reality from people who have lived through the horror of conflicts and wars such as Uganda, the Warao Indians in the Orinoco Delta, transsexual persons in Mongolia or the Taiga hunters in the Russian Far East. For this exhibition, Laiz has produced Fósil, a photographic series that analyses, documents and shows the evolution of mining in the basin of Leon. Since the end of the 19th century, mining has been more than a mere source of income in the province, the coal being the origin of a culture and a way of life around which whole populations have grown and flourished, which today risks extinction.
Exploration, knowledge, self-sufficiency and survival, collaboration and research processes, science and fiction or celebration are important themes in the work of Alfonso Borragán (Santander, 1983), which is displayed through multiple foci of interest: from the intake of light or meteors, collective ritual experiences and different experimental techniques to capture the light in images, to different lines of research on history, work, games and activities linked to the water of rivers and swamps. This last type of work is the leitmotif of the project No Man’s Land, which investigates the cultural and experiential sediment derived from the constant presence of water in one place, in this case the province of Leon. The history and mythology associated with rivers and swamps is capable of generating a network of cultural meanings related both to the scientific and the vernacular world, which the artist uses to show the experiences associated with water in its many manifestations.
Paco Algaba‘s (Madrid, 1968) productions can be described generally as experimental poetry, film and audiovisual texts, because they do not adhere to usual narrative conventions. Framings are created in a patient and meticulous way and, once established, are kept for several minutes, so that where nothing seems to be happening, a small event eventually takes places ¬—things like a subtle light change or the movements of the air. The artist takes this type of image as a departing point, almost always without dialogue and without the non-diegetic conventional contribution of the music, to deal with the landscape and slowly explore its density, its history or its conformation. For this exhibition, Algaba presents Europa solar: a collection of landscapes marked by post-historical inertia belonging to different lands throughout Europe. These are shown in their unfailing fate of ground zero territory, reconsidering the scale of man, their historical processes and their otherness.
Javier Riera (Avilés, Asturias, 1964) is linked to the tradition of the romantic landscape and explores the possibilities of art as a way of approaching the natural environment, the sublime that emerges in the mountains or the geometries that organize the internal order of nature. This double reference —a specific one referring to landscape, and a more abstract one derived from geometry as organizing principle— responds to his interest in locating the human being and our connections with the natural and the supernatural in the world and the universe. For Primary Sector Riera presents a series of photographs showing projections of geometric figures onto some mountains of the province, and a number of deer animations projected on the wall that remind us of the spiritual and animistic connection of humanity with its natural environment characteristic of cave paintings. Also using light as a vehicle to capture impressions, wild animals and natural elements are printed by contact upon large sheets of cyanotype paper, which are then grouped to make huge books in which one seems to dive almost physically into the mountains and its inhabitants.
Paco Algaba, Alfonso Borragán, Álvaro Laiz, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Javier Riera, Antje Schiffers
16 May 2015 - 17 January 2016
Curatorship: Manuel Olveira
Coordination: Carlos Ordás
The sector of work and economic production known as primary sector consists of activities associated with the transformation of natural resources into minimally processed primary products, which tend to be the basis of the raw materials used by the secondary sector. This sector has been very important in Castile and Leon and agriculture, livestock, forestry, beekeeping, aquaculture, hunting and mining have been traditionally practiced in the region.
Together with it, the Castile and Leon community has an important hydrographic network and nature reserves, is home to a large number of lakes, ponds and, especially, reservoirs, and the geological configuration has allowed for various sources of thermal or mineral and medicinal water. The Mountains of Valsaín and Sierra de Francia in the Central System, the valleys of Laciana, Omaña and Luna, and the Picos de Europa and Los Ancares, forming part of the Cantabrian mountains, have been declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO and, in addition, Castile and Leon is strongly related to two of the records in UNESCO"s Memory of the World programme: the Decreta of Leon of 1188, and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494.
This brief description illustrates the close traditional ties with the primary sector that are being lost as a consequence of rural migration, particularly after the Civil War. During the decades of the 1960s and 1980s, the major urban centres and provincial capitals experienced a slight population increase due to a thorough process of urbanization, but in general the Castilian and Leonese area, and especially the rural world, continues to have a serious depopulation problem and is seeing an abandonment of the primary sector. For all these reasons, MUSAC organizes an exhibition that aims to attend to the importance and presence of the landscape, agriculture and livestock, hunting, mining, etc., in this community through the work of a number of contemporary artists. On the one hand, it “documents” the change of economic paradigm that has made "inviable" some areas of the primary sector, but, on the other, highlights some of these activities, because they have an essential and undeniable value.
From the art and culture perspective, but also from the point of view of economy and society, this exhibition and the set of activities that accompany and complete it emphasise work located in the rural environment, regional balance, as well as the economic, cultural and human importance of the activities of the primary sector.
Throughout her career, Antje Schiffers (Heiligendorf, Germany, 1967) has developed a very consistent body of work and line of research related to various aspects of rural and "traditional" economies as places of cultural production. Schiffers places emphasis on contact, exchange, dialogue and cultural negotiation that allows a wider scope in relation to the opportunity and relevance of economic and/or cultural peripheries. To do this, this year the artist has produced in Jabares de los Oteros, together with the Blanco family, a new film belonging to the series she begun in 2007 Ich bin gerne Bauer und möchte es auch gerne bleiben, and a huge installation made up of straw bales that constitutes a space for meetings and presentations or auditorium called International Schnaps Bar. The sign for this space has been designed by the artist in collaboration with the school of art and conservation and restoration of Leon, based on the old stained glass windows that have left such a mark in the city since its installation in the Cathedral of Leon.
The work of Asunción Molinos Gordo (Aranda de Duero, Burgos, 1979) focuses on the social, political, economic and cultural implications of agriculture and food, exploring the rural sphere and the living conditions of the peasantry through the popular imaginary, the territory and the landscape. Without nostalgia, her proposals discuss the structural changes taking place in the countryside due to the regulations promoted by the EEC and encouraged by the big food companies. In 2010 she developed her project WAM (World Agricultural Museum) in Egypt, which will be presented in September in various facilities of the Sierra Pambley Foundation of Leon. It is an installation that reproduces the atmosphere and the visual language of the ancient Agriculture Museum in Cairo, coupled with contemporary discourses on the genetic engineering of food, intellectual property over seeds and the controversy of terms such as "food security". In addition, for the exhibition at MUSAC she has also produced the work Curriculum Vitae et Studiorum, a text that uses the pompous language of academia to describe the cultural and intellectual life of the peasants.
The Leonese photographer Álvaro Laiz (León, 1981) produces photographic reports and artistic projects focused on certain realities that have little visibility both in the media and in conventional shows. His work has been mainly developed in Africa, Asia and South America, in collaboration with various foundations and NGOs, to offer us images about the different reality from people who have lived through the horror of conflicts and wars such as Uganda, the Warao Indians in the Orinoco Delta, transsexual persons in Mongolia or the Taiga hunters in the Russian Far East. For this exhibition, Laiz has produced Fósil, a photographic series that analyses, documents and shows the evolution of mining in the basin of Leon. Since the end of the 19th century, mining has been more than a mere source of income in the province, the coal being the origin of a culture and a way of life around which whole populations have grown and flourished, which today risks extinction.
Exploration, knowledge, self-sufficiency and survival, collaboration and research processes, science and fiction or celebration are important themes in the work of Alfonso Borragán (Santander, 1983), which is displayed through multiple foci of interest: from the intake of light or meteors, collective ritual experiences and different experimental techniques to capture the light in images, to different lines of research on history, work, games and activities linked to the water of rivers and swamps. This last type of work is the leitmotif of the project No Man’s Land, which investigates the cultural and experiential sediment derived from the constant presence of water in one place, in this case the province of Leon. The history and mythology associated with rivers and swamps is capable of generating a network of cultural meanings related both to the scientific and the vernacular world, which the artist uses to show the experiences associated with water in its many manifestations.
Paco Algaba‘s (Madrid, 1968) productions can be described generally as experimental poetry, film and audiovisual texts, because they do not adhere to usual narrative conventions. Framings are created in a patient and meticulous way and, once established, are kept for several minutes, so that where nothing seems to be happening, a small event eventually takes places ¬—things like a subtle light change or the movements of the air. The artist takes this type of image as a departing point, almost always without dialogue and without the non-diegetic conventional contribution of the music, to deal with the landscape and slowly explore its density, its history or its conformation. For this exhibition, Algaba presents Europa solar: a collection of landscapes marked by post-historical inertia belonging to different lands throughout Europe. These are shown in their unfailing fate of ground zero territory, reconsidering the scale of man, their historical processes and their otherness.
Javier Riera (Avilés, Asturias, 1964) is linked to the tradition of the romantic landscape and explores the possibilities of art as a way of approaching the natural environment, the sublime that emerges in the mountains or the geometries that organize the internal order of nature. This double reference —a specific one referring to landscape, and a more abstract one derived from geometry as organizing principle— responds to his interest in locating the human being and our connections with the natural and the supernatural in the world and the universe. For Primary Sector Riera presents a series of photographs showing projections of geometric figures onto some mountains of the province, and a number of deer animations projected on the wall that remind us of the spiritual and animistic connection of humanity with its natural environment characteristic of cave paintings. Also using light as a vehicle to capture impressions, wild animals and natural elements are printed by contact upon large sheets of cyanotype paper, which are then grouped to make huge books in which one seems to dive almost physically into the mountains and its inhabitants.