The artist, curator and cultural manager from the Canary Islands Cristina Déniz Sosa (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1981) explores the aesthetics of the sacred and the ritual in her work, providing a unique perspective on the changes in our interaction with the natural environment. Refugio de Fuego (Shelter of Fire), the intervention she is presenting at Doramas Park, alludes to the ancient cucañas – conical structures made of reeds and sticks that formed an integral part of the coastal landscape of Gran Canaria. These constructions were closely linked to the cultivation of tomatoes in the open air and provided shade and shelter. This work was mainly done by women, who worked in the fields under the sun.

As is often the case in her work, Cristina has used natural materials with a powerful symbolic charge. As part of a personal and artistic ritual, she has visited the places affected by the fires, gathering up the burnt tree-trunks. The piece is put together with pine sticks from the summits of Gran Canaria, burnt in the fires of recent years. These burnt trunks are now reused as new bundles; they become a paradox, a key element in the piece. Something transformed by fire now provides shade and protection from the heat. At the same time, there is a return to a lush and lively environment where the trunks are displayed as a temple or monument to all those trees fallen in the fires.

This work is the result of an active observation of our relationship with the natural environment and the heritage we share, proposing protocols of connection that suggest new forms of coexistence and demarcating the territory between the living and the non-living. Through this initiative, it seeks to address critical issues such as the overexploitation of space, our increasing alienation from the environment and the abuse of natural resources, problems to which we all contribute by taking part in the economy that sustains our way of life.

Constructive aseessment: Noemi Tejera and Carolina Ruiz

Images of the process

Images of the piece