David Quiroga & Lina Mazenett at Utopiana Residency [CH]

Artist duo David Quiroga & Lina Mazenett [CO] explore notions of origin and symbolism in relation to the geological temporality of certain fundamental elements of the world economy, such as gold, coal, and various minerals

During their residency at Utopiana [CH], they conducted research for the project «Consanguinity», where they explored how the body, as well as the forest and each plant, are chemical laboratories where complex processes of energy transformation occur.

Based on Amazonian cosmologies and the process of salt extraction from plants, that they learned from several Indigenous Huitoto people in the Colombian Amazonia, the duo had encounters with scientists and visited different forests in Switzerland, where they collected, processed, and extracted salt from oak trees.

Especially interested in the idea of consubstantiality – the solidarity of matter –, they explore how humans share the same constitution with other beings that generally are perceived as distant and inanimate things, such as rocks, stars or plants, and how this affects the way we conceive ourselves as human beings and build our relationship with the environment and the cosmos.

The alchemy-like process of salt extraction aims to explore different ways of living our relationships with other living beings, mainly through the permanent and inevitable exchange of energy, substances, and information.

David and Lina created an experimental film that traces the process and later presented an installation at la_cápsula [CH], in June 2021, as an attempt to reveal kinship relationships with objects and beings beyond the human realm, especially through potassium salt, which is a vital substance for the metabolism of different bodies. A substance that flows from rocks to the soil, groundwaters, animals, and humans in an endless circulation.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Lina Mazenett & David Quiroga [CO] are an artist duo exploring the interrelationship between organisms and the misnamed “resources” of the environment, and their distribution and resignification through culture. They strive to blur the distinction between the concepts of nature and culture through practices that oscillate between past and present, science and mythology, Amerindian cultures and Western influence. Their work includes installations, photography, sculpture, and interventions.