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Soilscapes

 

 

Landscape of Alentejo, Portugal

Alentejo is comprised of a hilly oak savanna of green and brown, fenceless, with a building or two on the horizon. This landscape character is now disapearing. The Mediterranean Trilogy ( olive oil, bread and wine), consist in the tree most powerful elements of the Mediterranean culture and landscape and is the key to the identity Alentejo, playing a decisive role in its economic and cultural life throughout the history of almost eight centuries.

Throughout the ages, Alentejo´s economy and landscape have reflected global economic and political changes, wherever possible taking advantage of opportunities, sometimes shrinking, privileging fallows and emigration.

Today globalization shows a diversity and scope never witnessed, determining the fate of these territories. The abandonment of cereal crops and the growing monoculture of the intensive olive grove are responses to the reginal, national and international sorroundings. “The best of the Alentejo, is the freedom to chose the order and balance. These forms and pure lines, soft colors ranging from landscape architecture (…) an arid landscape, desiccated, as thin almost reduced to the bone. A landscape essential “(Eugenio de Andrade, Tributaries of silence, 1968).

This landscape character is now disapearing forever.

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Soilscapes, 1200x 1600 cm,  natural soil  pigment on paper  (in the frame of the exhibition Dé-jardiner, gr_und art space, Berlin 2019 )