[2025]

Cushions, blankets, a couple of branches, cardboard and a piece of plastic. Essential elements for a child to build a fort in the living room or in the garden. A refuge from the adult world, away from the gaze of parents. Interestingly, these are the same basic materials used to build a shelter in an alley, under a bridge or on the side of the road. A shelter from the elements of a hostile world and from the gazes of pedestrians.

Two spaces built on the basis of similar gestures, but which are profoundly distant in their meaning and symbolic load. One awakens nostalgia for a safe and privileged childhood, marked by love, protection and the freedom to make a mess, to take the space as a territory of expression and play.

In contrast, the cambuche (English: shack) generates nostalgia for a well-being that has not yet arrived. Its ephemeral and temporary condition carries the implicit promise of a home, a safe place that, regardless of its size or location, will always be better than the precariousness of the present.

This installation is the first attempt to address this topic, by combining elements from both universes, blurring the differences between the two kinds of construction, blending in the same space the endearing and the abject.

On view are a precarious structure built with ceramic branches tied with cotton rope and two small scale ceramic sculptures on branches and rope pedestals.