Tu cuerpo, la ofrenda. De la planta la fiesta
Después del Vendaval. Centro de Arte Santa Mónica – 02.10.2024 – 12.01.2025
A coffin that fertilizes the land, from which plants grow, whose flowers distill the elixir for the celebration, whose stems make the coffin that wraps the body, which returns to the earth, from which plants sprout, with which the elixir is distilled, with which the coffin is made, that wraps the body, which returns to the earth…
This installation addresses death as a circular, deeply ecological, and political matter. It is only possible to inhabit the Earth if we reconcile with finitude and understand the cyclical nature of life. This collective device has been generated through three experiments with people we deeply admire:
Biomaterials Laboratory with Susana Cámara Leret
In September 2024, we invited Susana Cámara to Mieres (Girona) to put her research in dialogue with ours under the premise of prototyping a biodegradable coffin made entirely from plant waste. In hop cultivation, beer producers only use the flowers. The remaining stems and leaves are considered waste, generating large amounts of discarded plant material. Susana, through her project Hop Ecologies in León, has been working for years on the plant’s imaginary and studying the design and production of materials from waste to give them new uses. We explain more about the process here.
Beer Making with Xavier Ribas Domenech
Fermenting is peaceful resistance. Celebrating our dead is also a form of resistance. We wanted to learn how to make our own beer to reclaim industrialized consumption models. To do this, we collaborated with Xavier Ribas Domenech, who guided us through the entire homemade beer-making process, from mashing to bottling. We drank the first fermentations together and discussed self-management, a food-based approach to death, and how “microorganisms have the final say.”
Graphic Design with Helga Juárez
Together with Helga Juárez, we worked on the graphic narrative of the Morir Guay beer. The image Helga created is a journey of clear mists and luminous presences. The vision of a landscape that is a portal to the invisible, to a place that makes peace with what we cannot grasp. An invitation to toast and grieve in our own way. All the phrases that can be read on the back of the bottles are flashes of the Morir Guay research, which we have been working on for five years—a subtext at the intersection of the political and the poetic, opening a panorama of dying in our country.
Throughout the exhibition, we will hold various activations to gather and share: a listening and dancing session to taste the new Morir Guay brews (a ginger, honey, and lemon IPA, a NEIPA, and a Hop Kombucha), and a practical session with Sarafina Landis, where she will share her experience as a death doula.
Your body, the offering. From the plant, the celebration also invokes the presences of our collaborators Jordi Miralles, author of the book Simplicity and Art in Dying and the platform Natural Funeral, and Sarafina Landis, a death doula. And many other people who, over five years of research, have inspired us to continue connecting death with love.
The Exhibition: Després del vendaval (After the Storm)
Curated by Tere Badia, Irati Irulegui, and Montserrat Soto, this exhibition brings together seven collectives that, through their political and poetic practices, traverse invisible zones where systemic violence is exercised, and rights are disregarded. It is from this invisibility that the voices of the collectives find ways to subvert the limits of the norm, occupy liminal spaces, and expand institutional cracks.
For a year, we have been working at the Santa Mónica Art Center with the collectives: Agitació Diska, La Creatura, LAC – Laboratori d’Art Comunitari, Sindillar, Sitesize, and TiritiTrans Trans Trans. There have been many learnings and resonances that are also present in the installation.
Acknowledgements:
Sol Prado
Lupulina
El Pony