The Willow Sees The Heron’s Image Upside Down

A landscape is always a construction, a way of seeing or a representation, or all these things at once. It is a framing of the gaze, which is trained to see in a certain way. The landscape is an exercise in appropriation, in moulding what we have learned to call nature in order to separate ourselves from it as humans1. When we try to depict it, and not communicate with it, through art, we create technologies of separation and distancing. We are constantly caught in the contradictions of this back-and-forth process.
Landscape is, in consequence, a political tool for the construction of subjectivities and of military and economic targets. At the same time, it affords a setting for contemplation in which we can project our own ghosts and those of others. There is no such thing as an unbiased observer.

Works by: Berenice Abbott, Adrián Alemán, Bleda & Rosa, Santiago Borja, Brassaï, Carolina Caycedo, Wilson Díaz, Patricia Esquivias, Harun Farocki, Trino Garriga Abreu, Dan Graham, Michele Horrigan, Marine Hugonnier, Hector Hyppolite, Isuma, Patrick Keiller, Teresa Lanceta, Janelle Lynch, Sean Lynch, Gilda Mantilla & Raimond Chaves, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Carme Nogueira, Tania Pérez Córdova, Peter Piller, Xavier Ribas, Xabier Salaberria, Amaia Urra, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa.