Artist’s Garden Film Programme

Programmed in conjunction with the Artist’s Garden commission, ‘Desert is a Forest’ by Sunoj D and Namrata Neog. The film programme features works by Pedro Neves Marques, Lyndsay Mann and Asunción Molinos Gordo.

Asunción Molinos Gordo, Barruntaremos (‘Inklings’), 2021, Single channel video, 9 min 37 sec. Courtesy of Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary for st_age and the artist.  

Barruntaremos (‘Inklings’) looks into other ways of inhabiting the world and sensing landscape through the voice and experiences of Pedro Sanz Moreno; shepherd from the region of Segovia (Spain) and knowledge-keeper of Cabañuelas, a traditional form of weather forecast transmitted from generation to generation based on the ability to read the landscape and surrounding natural elements. The film presents the elements that Pedro takes as reference and which serve as milestones in his weather predictions for the forthcoming years.

In this piece, Asunción Molinos Gordo challenges the romantic notion of landscape deeply embedded in art historical discourse, and approaches it as a grounds for exploring more-than-human networks that acknowledge animal intelligence and their interrelations. The conversation is summarised as a glossary of words that are at risk of extinction, that embody and express this ability of sensing nature and exist within its service to the community. This form of situated practice addresses global phenomena such as the climate emergency, which Pedro describes as “an interference in the signals of the landscape”.

This work opens up a debate on how rural and ancestral forms of knowledge are represented (most of the time dismissed) by the mass media. It pays special attention to informal knowledge as a space of possibility within the rural context, in which this embodied information is understood as a reclaiming of traditional self-organised systems of agrarian areas.

Asunción Molinos Gordo (b. 1979, lives and works in Madrid, Spain) is a research-based artist strongly influenced by disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. In her practice she questions the categories that define “innovation” in mainstream discourses today, working to generate a less urban-centric way of understanding progress. The main focus of her work is contemporary peasantry. She employs installation, photography, video, sound and other media to examine the rural realm driven by a strong desire to understand the value and complexity of its cultural production, as well as the burdens that keep it invisible and marginalised. She has produced work reflecting on land usage, nomad architecture, farmers’ strikes, bureaucracy on territory, transformation of rural labour, biotechnology and global food trade.

Molinos Gordo obtained her BFA and Master of Contemporary Art Theory and Practice from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She is currently studying Anthropology and Ethnography at UNED (Spain). Molinos Gordo won the Sharjah Biennial Prize in 2015 with her project WAM (World Agriculture Museum) and represented Spain at the 13th Havana Biennial, 2019. Her work has been exhibited at venues including V&A Museum (London), Delfina Foundation (London), ARNOLFINI (Bristol), The Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), Darat Al Funun (Amman), Cappadox Festival (Uchisar-Turkey), MAZ Museo de Arte de Zapopan (Mexico), MUSAC (León, Spain) and CA2M (Madrid, Spain), among others.