Talk with Gabriela Albergaria, Marcelo Moscheta e Margarida Lagarto
Filipa Oliveira
Filipa: I feel a great intimacy with nature in your works, albeit a closeness that reveals itself differently in your individual practices. Even so, the starting point — whether due to your origins, in the cases of Margarida and Gabriela, or a connection through science and botany, in the case of Marcelo — seems to be an ever-present and close relationship with nature. This relationship opens up the possibility of a very particular “site of speech” for each of you. I’d like you to talk about this intimate relationship with the natural world.
Marcelo: My relationship with open and natural spaces concerns the question of scale. It’s a need to measure my size against the size of the world, an idea that has accompanied me since my master’s thesis, in which I used Ítalo Calvino’s short story, “From the Opaque.” At the end of the story, he presents a more scientific proposal of measuring the space of the self, and even one’s own shadow, based on geometric descriptions. I found it incredible that you could define your space, for example, the space your body occupies in a room, with a very precise, almost scientific, and, at the same time, very poetic description. He ends the story by formulating the geometric place of the self. It’s a beautiful construction, trying to force a visualisation of my existence from another objectivity, not just my subjectivity. I like this overlapping of layers, more “scientific” ways of approaching space, and other more subjective, poetic, and sensitive ways of being in that space. Since then, I think my works have started to have this overlapping of codes, which are used almost like an authorisation, a stamp. It’s a more refined vision, as if science were more sophisticated, rational, and precise than the experience itself.
Margarida: For me, it’s a perfectly spontaneous relationship, an experience that comes from my childhood. I was born in a very small town, very, very far out in the countryside, in a relatively unpopulated area. That was my world: the plant world, the world of animals, but above all, the plant world. I started working within the landscape: either through its plant elements, the waters, or its surrounding atmosphere, the landscape is always there. I really like herbs. I’ve always loved what people call weeds. I’m a collector of giant weeds that I bring into my studio, rolled up or stretched out. For example, I picked a beautiful weed called Polygonum aviculare with a diameter of one meter twenty. It’s a plant that grows parallel to the ground and has a rounded shape. It looks like lace. It’s absolutely stunning. I collected several, rolled up the first ones, and stretched another one on the studio wall, where I’m making watercolours and drawings. I don’t usually work with garden or potted flowers, but with more spontaneous herbs and plants. They reveal good and bad things. They’re also very beautiful. It’s not an intellectual thing; this is my natural universe. I wish people would pay more attention to the plant world and wouldn’t be so uppity about these so-called weeds.
Gabriela: I was also born in the countryside, so I have many similarities with Margarida, but unlike her, I didn’t use nature as an initial theme for my work. It arose much later, when I became more curious about issues related to in the traditional sense and to question how gardens, as built landscapes, are a substitute for nature. That’s when I started working with photography and making models of gardens. At that point, the issue of gardens became critical to me: almost a cultural study of the relationship between humans and nature. How do we manipulate nature? How does nature respond and manipulate us? Then, with the gardens, I began to work more site-specific, with direct actions in nature. Concerning this, I feel more in tune with Marcelo. When I walk innature, I’m constantly measuring my relationship with the place and asking myself: “Where am I?” “What is this land?” “How do I measure myself?” “How do I relate to this place?” I’m interested in issues about agriculture, food and the manipulation of nature. I often use agricultural sciences to find solutions to my problems. These are questions that relate to nature, but they are far removed from the idea of landscape. They are questions of personal responsibility. I address these issues in my latest works.
Filipa: Could you talk about your working process? Your practices come from being in nature. Walking seems essential for the three of you: going to the place, measuring the body in space, collecting soil, seeing shadows.
Marcelo: I feel that both Gabriela and I (I don’t know Margarida’s work that well) have a very close relationship with the naturalists and share the idea that you have to go to the place and experience it, that it’s from that first contact that every thing is born, as if that were the fuel for all creation. Nowadays, there is no longer a place that isn’t mapped out within the guidelines of latitude and longitude. It is necessary to return to these same practices, to this awareness that every time I go out, every walk I take, every time I walk barefoot, put my foot in a stream, sit down to watch a tree, watch the wind sway, creating shadows, everything is a profound and necessary discovery. Life in the city, that “comfortable” life, takes us in the complete opposite direction. It’s no wonder many artists have turned to this urge to find links lost in our progress and need for comfort and development. This approach, this desire to understand nature, has an echo in these naturalists, which I find very beautiful. It’s a romantic idea that drives us.
Gabriela: There’s nothing wrong with romanticism. There’s nothing negative about it. We need poetry or even transcendence. It comes from people’s need for something else to fulfil them.
Margarida: People are empty, aren’t they?
Gabriela: Exactly, it’s a huge problem we have. These issues are not only political but also, and above all, social. I think because we’ve lost our relationship with nature. We have a new need for nature, which is no longer romantic, as it was in the 19th century.
Marcelo: Thinking of someone who I believe is a reference for all of us, Henry David Thoreau lived for two years in an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods and is the same person who wrote the book “Civil Disobedience”. It was a statement.
Margarida: He was already aware of what the industrial world would do to the world. William Wordsworth, also aware of the problems of industrialisation, advised people to go to the riverside, touch the stones, and get involved with nature.
Gabriela: For me, walking in nature involves creating that special relationship with a space: learning about that space and summoning the desire to create. It’s very therapeutic. Above all, it’s about being attentive to light, shapes and situations. These are starting points for the work, stimuli, because in the end I’m a studio artist. Being in nature is a learning process that I take into the studio. It’s a way of starting to think. Then, I put stories together, notice particularities and strange things, and mix it all up in the studio.
Margarida: It’s the same for me; the search for well-being in an environment where that was extremely important when I was a child. It was easy for me to get out of the urban part of the village and into the countryside. At that time, a girl wasn’t supposed to venture out into the countryside on her own; that wasn’t how you played, but I liked lying in the dirt, on the moss. I enjoyed the smell of mud. With my physical size — a five-year-old girl — lying on the ground, on the moss or in the middle of the grass and having that vast dome above me, like a fisheye perspective, also gave me a sense of scale. That’s something that continues to fascinate me, beyond this primordial thing that is my spiritual well-being. That smallness I felt when I lay on the ground is something I still feel today. We are a microscopic part of this universe. That’s also why I love herbs so much, because they’re overlooked and are as important in our lives as anything else on the surface of the Earth. I feel closer to herbs than to majestic things: tiny little things that inspire an idea of humility in the face of this universe, so giant and absolutely overwhelming.
Filipa: You often use materials that you take directly from nature. In this exhibition, we have the case of Erva Seca by Margarida and Toda pedra é uma pequena montanha by Marcelo, as well as the soil and seeds that Gabriela uses. In your practice and work ethic, I see more than someone using nature. It’s almost like a partnership, a “making with”.
Margarida: Some friends gave me a bit of a plant, Tradescantia pallida purpurea, which I put in a pot in my house. It was almost forty years ago, but I kept propagating the plant. I no longer have the original, but it’s still with me, and it has a particularity that impresses me, which is that it’s as fragile as it is resilient. I think it originated in Mexico and then came to Europe, but I’ve already found it in Macau. I don’t know if it’s spontaneous or not.
Gabriela: Do you know Gilles Clement’s book, The Planetary Garden? The author writes: “Long before humans were born, animal and plant species were travelling ceaselessly: seeds transported by the wind, by animals and by sea currents. We do not know the geographical origin of the largest seed in the world, the coconut, travelling on the planet’s belt, washed away by cyclones. While the coconut floats, maple samaras and dandelion seeds fly away. Many seeds pass through the digestive tract of birds, rejected as soon as the fruit pulp has been digested – like cherries.” He’s saying that we can question the idea of the spontaneity of plants.
Margarida: It’s this thing of dissemination, of reproduction that I do, and nature does by itself. The behaviour of this plant is a bit like that of many weeds: it’s very resistant and, at the same time, charming and beautiful. It’s like peacocks, with their beautiful tails; it can also be very showy. If you came across it in a field during a walk, you couldn’t help but notice it. In the studio, I dissect it and make watercolours and embroidery on cloths I inherited from my family.
Marcelo: It’s funny; recently, I’ve also been questioned about this by people who didn’t see my intervention in the stones but simply the displaced element coming out of nature into the gallery. My relationship with nature is one of respect and reverence. The stone is so well resolved in symbolic, poetic, and formal terms that I don’t feel authorised to pierce, sculpt or carve it. I often say that stone is the DNA of the landscape. One day, talking to a geologist, I confirmed this intuition. A stone is a fragment of the whole. It contains within itself all the information about the space where it was formed, where it is placed, etc. I’ve never been able to think of a relationship that could add meaning. I don’t want to be a dominator or a coloniser with a predatory attitude, so I try to get close to and resemble the element I’m working with. The materials we work with, plants, stones, clouds or soil, are very generous. It takes a great deal of intimacy and coexistence for this relationship to exist. I chose these stones, carried them around, and felt their weight. I washed them, removed the dirt, searched for the position they should take, experimented, looked at them closely, and got to know them. Sometimes, working at a given time wasn’t possible, and I had to come back the next day to look at them differently. Establishing this longer, more extended time with our work is deeply respectful. I’ve always seen artistic creation as relationships of affection that we weave through relationships of intimacy. I think of my action as an artist as a gesture of understanding and communion. Communion with what I do, with the materials and with others. An exhibition is a sharing. The stone is, in a way, my mirror. It’s my double.
Gabriela: I find it interesting that you take that as a position. I feel that way too. In my case, a path starts with using tree branches to build a sculpture resembling a tree. I then extrapolate to the question of construction and soil as a sculptural material, soil as a colour for drawings, or a starting point for drawings. Nowadays, it’s important to me that all the materials I choose for my work disappear in the end, that they dissolve into the work. So, from the beginning, when I’m looking for things, wandering around the sites, to the moment I’m confronted with what I’ve collected and how I transformed it in the studio, a complete natural cycle must be present in each piece. The only thing I can’t get my head around is plastic packaging; I can only pack in bubble wrap. I feel a great affinity with your processes. They’re all very similar. In the studio, we transform things differently but end up with very similar positions. Now, I’m always very attentive to these issues. For example, if I’m working with clay, I ask myself what kind of clay and what kind of wood, when I work with wood. When I use artificial things, they have to be second-hand. In these new pieces, with the embroidery, I use a Japanese technique, sashiko, to mend fabrics. Basically, I want to draw attention to the fact that we can always start again in the complete cycle of nature. These things interest me, even on a more poetic level.
Filipa: I will ask you another question that brings together two fundamental issues in this exhibition. On the one hand, the title I took from the Ramones song, “She Talks to Rainbows”, but which I mistakenly translated into Portuguese as something meaning “She speaks in rainbow”. Carlos Antunes read the title in an extraordinary way, which I hadn’t thought of: this “speaks in” implies a language, “speaking in Portuguese” or “speaking in French”, but there can also be a “speaking in rainbow”. I think it’s a perfect idea for your works. In the specificity of your practices, I think you articulate a language that is very close to nature: a language of stones, herbs, gardens, forests, and soil. The other issue, an idea that is also fundamental to your work, is the gesture of counteracting invisibilities. Even though there is growing concern about the climate crisis, I feel that there is a blindness towards species, for example, plants, that don’t fit certain ideals of beauty or usefulness, such as certain weeds.
Gabriela: Over the years, I’ve realised that people aren’t blind at all. I think it’s a life process. People have this need, but there’s no way of satisfying it. If you work from nine to eight, you don’t have time to enjoy nature. Almost everyone I know has a potted plant growing at home. The need is there. I have an archive of photographs depicting the presence of nature in people’s homes, always seen from outside their windows. There’s always a plant, sometimes a plastic one. I believe people aren’t blind, but life has been paced by other (artificially created) priorities, and people have stopped looking at nature. I think it has to do with time, with the use of time. When I sculpt a tree, the first thing people say to me is, “That’s a load of timber”. But then, when I insist on the work, they tell me, “You’ve given the tree its dignity back”. And then they show me all the plants they have in pots. We need to allow time for calm and reflection so that we can look at the world differently.
Margarida: I agree with Gabriela. People are much more attentive than we might think at first glance. In fact, it’s not just a question of little flowers in plastic pots to decorate or the number of seeds we buy in the supermarket to sow on our balconies. At home, I thought I didn’t have time to worry about feeding the plants anymore. I started with three or four pots, the most important plants, but now I have thirty. Taking care of things and watching them grow is in our DNA. It’s our shared language. These are sensations that transcend us. Caring for something is very important. It’s about being connected.
Gabriela: It’s funny you say that. I have iron deficiency and can fall into extreme states of physical exhaustion. Once, in New York, I went to a holistic doctor who told me: “There’s only one thing you have to do. Find a garden, take off your shoes and let your feet feel the soil”.
Marcelo: A forest bath...
Gabriela: That was incredible advice. She was right: there’s a whole balance that needs to be struck. It’s a rainbow.
Marcelo: I’m thinking of a fundamental poem in Brazilian literature, “Educação pela Pedra” by João Cabral de Melo Neto. He wrote: “to learn from the stone: to go to it often”. Later, the poem explores the ideathat education by stone is pre-didactic. He develops the whole poem around the notion that there is something intangible reverberating inside us, something we know is here. These stones, these plants, these weeds, in a way, they are inside us. They are part of us. The idea that language is in the elements and us is beautiful. You must go to them, cultivate them.
Filipa: So we can all speak in rainbow, you just have to see it.
Marcelo: This rainbow idea is lovely because our first account of the rainbow is a covenant between creator and creation. An eternal covenant.