We asked Chiara Sgaramella to join our Asturias edition because her practice as an artistic researcher focusses on the connection between art and agriculture. She was born and raised in the heel of Italy’s boot, but currently lives and works in Valencia, Spain. Sgaramella sees art as an integrated part of daily life, as a collective effort. From this perspective she studies the relations between soil, food and culture. We all know paella as a dish, but what do we know about rice production in Spain? When and how did rice arrive as a crop in Europe? Chiara developed a travelling trolley about the subject. 

A talk – that took place in the hazel forest close to PACA – about eco-feminist art, the Zapatistas, radical interdependency and the impact of scarcity. 

Immediately after the group talk (#8) Sgaramella needed leave for Piemonte, Italy, where she took part in a 1 year residency. Chiara worked with abandoned tools, found in a barn. She reproduced these ‘extensions of farmers hands’ in large prints, as an ode to agricultural gestures. 

References:

More about Chiara Sgaramella:

https://chiarasgaramella.com/

About the symbolic association between Covadonga (a prechristian place of worship near  Picos de Europa) and the Spanish/catholic identity:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/his.2002.14.1-2.37

Another Possible World, exhibition including works by Zapatista in Museum Reina Sofiá:

https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/room/room-00213

More about Chiara’s Oryza rice trolley:

https://chiarasgaramella.com/oryza-collection

‘Dona arbre’, Fina Miralles, 197oies:

https://www.macba.cat/en/art-artists/artists/miralles-fina/translacions-dona-arbre-documentacio-laccio-realitzada-novembre