// 09.05.2024 - 21.07.2024 / Sala CUB2

SAUVAGE

Silvia Sempere


SAUVAGE is a project in which multiple research processes are intertwined to explore a central idea:

The loss of the “wild condition” needed for the survival of many animal species on our planet.

The project includes three installations, consisting of large format drawings, videos and small sculptures. The installations are titled La reserva [“The reserve”] (2021), Los desprovistos [“The deprived”] (2024) and Requiem (2025). La reserva is about the paradoxical nature of reserves, associated, at the same time, with prospects for survival and with beings that are vulnerable or at risk of extinction. A reserve must provide special conditions allowing communities of different species to thrive, as long as they are looked after by carers. Ultimately, this means that they can only survive in captivity, as seen in Denatured, Interdit and Detected/Undetected.

The second installation, Los desprovistos, also focuses on how that primitive and essential space in which species could live in the wild has been attacked. This irretrievable loss is addressed in Rojo salvaje. Orla de vulnerables is concerned with a long extermination process, the result of which is that many animals are unable to defend themselves. The Los desposeídos series draws attention to the general objectification of their bodies.

While displaying animals as trophies is not new, these works show them without their most characteristic attributes: in Amenaza amarilla, they have been dismembered and turned into collection items; in Omnia vanitas, they are systematically exploited, even to obtain compounds and products supposed to have healing properties.

All in all, the large format drawings, sculptures and videos created for this project offer a poetic insight into how humans cannot understand that we are but a part of all life on planet Earth; for instance, La distancia mínima looks at our inability to live in a shared space with other species.

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