Client: Fundación Crisálida

Overview

This land artwork is of an ephemeral nature, commissioned by Fundación Crisálida, an initiative for integration into the workplace of nine people with intellectual disabilities. Created in three phases, the work utilizes the change of the seasons and the change of the colours of the earth. This first phase of the artwork was realised using the green colour of the wheat field, the light tan color of the soil and the dark tone of compost, on a 3-hectare plot of land in the rural setting of Estopiñán del Castillo, a small town in Aragón, Spain. On the ground we see a pair of hands (the small hand of a child and an adult hand) that are coming together. With their hands, people at Fundación Crisálida bakes bread on a daily basis for their town and the towns nearby.

Goals

Phase 1: Nourishing Self-Esteem depicts some of the basic objectives of Fundación Crisálida. The artwork looks to reverse the lack of love, the lack of recognition, the dismissal that is common in the experience of social exclusion, intellectual disability, and situations of abandonment. To create a work of art in the countryside, as a homage to the daily tasks of people who belong to a collective minority - at a time when jobs, as well as the countryside, are undervalued and these collective minorities usually do not form part of artistic endeavours - is to lift up an appeal for hope and perform an act that, due to its performative nature, gives symbolic value to creation. By doing so, it celebrates the value of horizontal relationships, recognize the individual input for the good of the community, and allows us to glimpse all that we are capable to achieve when we unify our efforts to make ideas come together that can only be carried out if we form a team.

Process

The artwork was made with the help of local volunteers, farmers and their machinery (tractors and tillers for the soil), the artist and his family, the help of GPS tracking technology to create the initial design on the ground. The design was constantly check from above with the use of a drone, followed by raking the soil to create the image.

Additional Information

Nourishing Self-Esteem impacts on a personal level, but also is reflected on a community level: We nourish self-esteem when we create ties that unite us to others, when we feel like part of a family, when we know that we are useful, and know that our contribution impacts in the wellbeing of the community.