Marginalia #77: Antonio Bravo

Through this section, monthly, we invite agents of the artistic system to share a selection of images related to their practice or current interests. Images are published daily in the header of our website and shared through our Instagram profile. At the end of the month, the complete selection of images is published together with a text that contextualizes them. Here is the selection of December 2021.

The Planting and Harvest Lessons are based on my interest in incorporating specific knowledge of agriculture, as a way of understanding and relating to the present. For this, I carried out a field investigation that consisted of working the harvest and planting of corn and beans during the storms of 2016, 2017 and 2018. The work dynamics were dictated by the land and the community of origin of my family, located in the Zacatepec ranch in Tepexi de Rodríguez, Puebla. The research resulted, among other objects, in a series of statements, phrases, photographs and drawings that address concepts ranging from migration, inheritance, belonging, return and violence, to the physical effort required to care for, walk and recover a way of life.

This project had its origin in affective-family issues, my father and mother had to move from the rural way of life to an urban one, in that process, they were forced to pave the way for the family seeds and the transmission of knowledge on the work of and, with the land. I understand that this is not a particular issue, it is part of a systematic process that has deteriorated peasant ways of life. Given this, I am encouraged to learn from agriculture, so that from its practice I may find questions around the viability of a possible return to the field as a way of sustaining life, if this is possible or is it just a palliative before the climatic and social emergencies present.

Antonio Bravo.