Seven years ago, I was wandering our olive grove when a couple of old gloves buried in the soil caught my attention. Their texture brought back memories of the dry landscape I saw in my childhood when the fields resembled a massive puzzle of cracked land due to a catastrophic drought that lasted for years. These gloves, a second skin to the worker’s, were badly damaged by the arduous work involved in the fields and also by the exposure to the weather conditions. To me, they perfectly recalled the famous biblical passage: ‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you shall return’. A verse that, I believe, reveals the depth of the connection between humans and the soil.
It is no coincidence that our planet is called Earth. All terrestrial life depends on the fragile, friable layer of soil that covers the continents. Without it, living beings would never have emerged from the oceans. This precious covering is excruciatingly slow to form and can be destroyed terrifyingly fast. A mere inch of soil can take centuries to build up, but if mistreated can be devastated in just a few seasons. Trees are one of the best allies to fight against soil erosion: they improve soil quality, store water mitigating droughts and floods, regulate temperature, positively impact rainfalls and even their roots serve as anchors to prevent the migration of soil.
For these reasons, I believe that preserving traditional olive tree plantations, which rely on hand picking techniques, is a sustainable agricultural practice which play a significant role in climate change and in the wellbeing of numerous families and communities.
With the interconnection between olive trees, dry soil and workers present in my mind, I have now been collecting gloves from our olive grove for 7 years. I have scanned and magnified them (see image below on the left), revealing the details on their surface to create a large aerial map. This multi-layered map installation represents the arid lands of Andalusia where the olive trees grow, watered and nourished by the sweat and effort of their workers. This art piece reminds us how life can emerge from our arid lands through imagination and determined human commitment.
INSPIRED BY COINCIDENCES
I always keep myself searching for treasures of any kind. One day I was digging into piles of documents in what was the old office of the farmhouse when I found few rolls of papers with my father’s name on them. I am convinced they were waiting for me. To my surprise, I discovered that 2 of them were antique aerial photographs that portrait the lands where my family’s olive groves are. These pictures were part of a survey conducted by the army in the 60s and they show the time and exact coordinates where they were taken. They are like time capsules.
I found these photographs incredibly beautiful and they inspired me to recreate an aerial map of the territory with the gloves I collected for years.
