TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

The ecological crisis forces us all to meditate on the consequences the ecosystems are suffering now,
and the damage is extending quickly through ecosystems and has effects on us directly. “Earth Womb” is an artwork delivered as an action by the artist, by displacing an object that belongs to the laboratory environment (with the use of a petri dish) to the natural environment of the soil in the forest. The agar plates contain a small sample of the same soil as the forest, then, the artist places the petri dishes inside a hole in the forest ground, and covers them with the soil from the forest. The embrace of the weather conditions and time (12 days) allow for fungal colonies to grow on the petri dishes. By displacing the laboratory object into the forest soil, the artist generates a bond with the Earth by creating an energetic exchange, giving the Earth energy in the shape of an artwork that is embraced by the forest soil, and in return, the Earth provides with living matter as fungal colonies grew from the soil of the forest. An energetic exchange that seeks to forge a bond based on reciprocity and respect. Adding a reflective dimension to the exponential growth of laboratory-based practices in science and art and exposing the inequality experienced by underrepresented artists and practitioners that can’t have access to those hierarchical lab environments made to originate new narratives of power not only in the contemporary art practices but also on the emerging models and systems imposed on contemporary societies, and with consequences generating inequality and hierarchies at different scales. The displacement of the petri dish into the forest soils is an action that attempts to create a new discourse in which the power owned by the industry/science monopoly is re-distributed and “displaced” into nature, acknowledging nature as the maximum conscious wisdom.
Reciprocity between humans and Earth is achieved as an energetic exchange that will prevail through time. This artwork delivered as an action seeks to revert the importance of the practices on the lab and gives priority to Earth, nature, the ecosystems and soil as the womb of life and as a potential source of energy for future societies, in future stages of human civilisation.