Instituto Cervantes

R. de Santa Marta 43F R/C, 1169-119 Lisboa

10 . 10 . 2024 → 14 . 12 . 2024

monday - friday → 10:00 am – 08:00 pm

saturday → 09:30 am – 01:00 pm

Artist

Saleta Rosón

‘The desert is still that place where the traveller, at last, after a long journey, finds his soul of sand, which is his ownmemory’.
Manuel Vicent
In the 20^th century, photography became a powerful medium for documenting the impact of human action on nature. In the face of the magnitude of the environmental crisis, art not only documents, but also stands as an agent of awareness and change. Contemporary artists use their work to awaken ecological sensitivity and promote a profound reflection on our relationship with nature.

Saleta Rosón’s ‘The Memory of the Desert’ takes us to two abandoned towns: a colonial town by the name of Kolmanskop, built by the Germans in 1908 in the Namib Desert (Namibia) to house diamond mine workers. The other is Al Madam, a city built between the 1970s and 1980s in the interior of the Emirate of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), just 60 km from the city of Dubai. These two cities were created by man in the desert, occupying nature by intervening in its life cycle and changing the fate of the dunes, sands and sediments that for centuries sustained this ecosystem. In successive decades, man became an invader of these desert places, and when he no longer needed them and abandoned them, nature began its own particular reconquest.

The photographer Saleta Rosón arrived at the origins of the world a decade ago, to begin a healing journey, with the intention of seeking calm, listening to the silences and calming the noises she brought with her; she found herself and, at the same time, the desert.

A storm of creativity pushed her to cities trapped in time, where walls and ruins reminded her how fragile we are, how insignificant human beings are and how arrogant it is to think that we can dominate nature. Those early works confirmed her as an insatiable creator, always behind a lens in search of that frame, that perspective, that play of light and shadow; the authentic. A sincere portrait of the power of nature and its tireless struggle to reconquer the place that once belonged to it. Sands in constant movement, with the aim of recovering that which was taken away from it long ago by man. Now he recovers it with force, creating a different place, a perfect combination of textures, shapes and tonalities; colours rusted by the passage of time, abandoned architectures that would become ruins without memory if Saleta had not decided to rescue them from oblivion.

Saleta Rosón creates a link between herself, the lens of her camera and the nature she portrays. She does this with great technical skill, but above all with a respectful and faithful gaze to what nature has once again built. The beauty that she captures in her lens is real, although she portrays landscapes that may seem surreal, through original perspectives and superimpositions of different shots. Places that invite the viewer to interact as if it were a hyperrealist painting: the sand manages to get out of the frame, invites you to pick it up, touch it, move it aside, discover what it hides, why it is there. This sensation invades you and takes you to other worlds where the imagination flies, longing for a reconstruction of the imaginary, of these abandoned cities, walls demolished by the passage of time, uninhabited rooms, remains of rubble, rubbish, and footprints caused by the wind or by some animal.

In short, the exhibition project ‘The Memory of the Desert’ not only shows us the traces of the passage of time, but also invites us to reflect on the relationship between nature and human intervention. It reminds us that, although human beings may transform and dominate nature for a time, in the end, nature always finds a way to regain its space.