The City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is proud to present the fourth “Biotopies” exhibition on art and ecology; the project is curated by PSJM, a team for creation, theory and management formed by Cynthia Viera and Pablo San José. Under the slogan “Dreaming Eco-cities” this new “Biotopies” exhibition presents artistic interventions created specifically for the Doramas Park which, by means of QR codes engraved on the sustainable signs located in the park, will be extended to SaladeArteSocial.COM, a platform that hosts the developments of the installations, providing a digital museography accessible at all times.
Just as in previous years, “Biotopies 4” combines the work of national and international artists with that of others from the art scene in the Canary Islands. On this occasion, the English duo Leap Then Look, the artist Lucía Loren from Madrid and Cristina Déniz Sosa from Gran Canaria will all be present.
After exhibiting at galleries such as the Tate, Royal Academy, Henry Moore Foundation and Turner Contemporary, the English collective Leap Then Look are bringing “Make Remake” (2024) to Doramas Park: a participatory sculpture for children, a set of grooved organic forms that can be endlessly reworked and reformed, assembled and disassembled. Creative construction is thus understood as an organic process that emerges with no planning, situating human action right at the heart of nature’s behaviour and not as an activity in confrontation with it.
The artist from Gran Canaria Cristina Déniz Sosa challenges us with “Refugio de fuego” (Refuge of Fire), a monumental piece made with pine poles from the summits of Gran Canaria, burnt in the fires of recent years. The construction evokes the cucañas, those conical accumulations of reeds that once formed part of the coastal landscape of Gran Canaria, resulting from the cultivation of tomatoes. The piece, which explores the aesthetics of the sacred and the ritual, makes us reflect on the disappearance of both the natural environment and agricultural activities.
Lucía Loren is a leading artist in the crossover between art and ecology, focusing on a fundamental ecosystemic service at an environmental level, such as pollination. Loren presents a beautiful interspecies installation, “Enjambre” (Swarm), a series of swarm collectors for the Canary Island Black Bee placed on the branches of a large Kapok tree in Doramas Park. These are handcrafted pieces made from woven reeds, produced in collaboration with the local artisan José Miguel Méndez.
This year, under the slogan “Dreaming Eco-cities”, several different parallel activities will be held for younger visitors: guided visits for children to the work of Lucía Loren and Cristina Déniz Sosa and a workshop given by Leap Then Look. In this workshop, Lucy and Bill, members of the English collective, invite participants to build sculptures thinking about how they can spread and grow like plants. This process will be captured through photography and time-lapse video. The workshop goes beyond a mere practical action in order to generate reflection and make us think about what we really are: natural beings.
Cynthia Viera and Pablo San José say that “Biotopies expresses aesthetic responses to the urgent situation of the planet in as poetic a way as possible”. This fourth event thus remains faithful to the starting premises of the project: the creation of sustainable works of art produced locally, the participation of different artists and collectives with experience in the field, an equal balance in relation to gender equality, a collaborative and participative character, performance in the public and digital space, as well as spectacularity subordinated to ecological values. These values reinforce the long-term goal of “Biotopies”: “to raise awareness through creativity and ethical behaviour for environmental justice”.
