Folk of ground

Folk of ground is a participatory performance that took place in La Flecha del Arte residence, La Sortija field, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The purpose of this work was the search for the construction and recognition of the women’s collective as part of the materiality of life. In this performance I incorporated healing rituals with Argentine medicinal plants, corn and mud. I was interested in the relationship between caring for the land and caring for the body of women in relation to the vital and how exploitation affects both equally. For this reason, I thought of doing the performance on one of the country roads where plantations and local workers coexist. There I set up a ritual space with cloth stained with corn grains, stones stacked like apachetas and small logs of wood hanging from the branches of the trees.

I invited eight women to accompany me to carry a cloth, which had been stained with corn, and which carried nine ears of corn inside. We enter the ritual space and position ourselves around the cloth. Once there, we began to perform the medicinal plant tea ceremony and circulate the bowl that contained it. I placed a bowl containing mud from the field in the center of the cloth on the floor. Inside there I placed the nine ears of corn. I took one of them and started to paint my face with mud. With the same ear of corn, I painted a woman’s face with mud and I gave it to her. She filled the ear of corn with mud and continued to paint the face of another woman. Thus, one by one, they were encouraged and painted: face, arms, legs. The mud and the skin united through action, realizing that we are soil and the soil is part of us, and that for life to be possible it is necessary to take care of it, nourish it and nourish ourselves.

Be part of the process. Perceive, be and connect with the presences
of this and other worlds
Feeding and letting yourself go through the medicine
Expand the beat in everything that surrounds
Build an altar and ceremony
Print an I that twinkles and that allows dilution
in a collective, stained and watery skin
resonate an I that sinks into the territory and returns us
a folk of ground

PLACE

La Flecha del Arte residence, La Sortija field. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Coordinated by Margarita Garcia Faure.

DATE

January 2020

PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD

Margarita García Faure