We live life close to the chest. We take – drag – everything there. How monotonous this activity becomes, of bringing everything close, to analyse and dissect intensively. Beautiful, but undoubtedly painful and inevitably destructive. We feel low, strongly, we feel in the chest, in the heart, in that space between the mouth and the belly. We feel with only a small portion of our body, we express ourselves with only a small portion of our body, and the rest is left there, dragged. Therefore, I want to discourse about castles, about sand.

 

The building of a “castle” allows the expansion of movements and action, it allows the stacking and unstacking – untangling – of the forms and reforms that pass before our eyes and that we cannot immediately capture. It is a reflection of a reflection, quick and fleeting, that we try again and again to erect. It is a controlled revolt, a revolution that follows several directions and alters a space and changes the air, its direction and intention. The “castle” is a block, a space of protection and suspension of time, an immersion in a welcoming reality/unity that is warm and keeps us safe, isolated from the outside world. Whoever says castle says house, whoever says house says body and whoever says body says soul, says reason, says certainties, says stubbornness, says mannerisms, says ideals and says so much more.

 

But speaking more precisely of castles, (made) of sand. Sand makes everything ephemeral, destructible, fragile, vulnerable. However, ephemerality does not just have to be a lack of; it can be the opening of space for something new, the possibility of a mutation, of a new thought, an invitation to more fleeting moments that bring us different perspectives to the easy and prolonged quotidian. In this sense, I feel like equating life with this granular material, which joins and separates with more or less water, more or less defining moments, which collapses and rebuilds in a continuous and assiduous way. And, sometimes, we get attached and delay in the sameness, we forget that we are like sand and that nothing is static, that comfort is a response to discomfort, that a certainty was once an uncertainty and that our presence does not last forever.

 

And what to do when our presence doesn’t last forever? We build sandcastles believing that they will be destroyed, but we build a life experience that we aspire to be linear and robust, untouchable, unalterable and memorable (for us and for others); that happens close to the chest. We look for what leaves a mark, what distinguishes, what differs, renouncing the “just because”, the “because I feel like it”, the “because I understood it as such”. “28th August: Horse hanging from the ceiling, upside down” is, then, an invitation to play, to destroy, adapt and build an exhibition that is not absolute nor static, which tries as much as possible to stay distant from pretentiousness and preciousness; a possible way to grow the feeling out of the chest, to think of life as an eternal revolution, with childhood as an object of inspiration.

 

Five “stages” considered essential to the activity being studied – the trip, the laying down (spreading towels and burying umbrellas), the warming up/preparation (necessary stretching), the climate / the material and the destruction (natural and human) –, inform and shape creative expressions that aim to occupy space in a metaphorical “sandbox” in which all visitors are encouraged to play.