The work projects in form of daring shadows the text, in memory of the people executed, turning memory into an element of living landscape, narrowing the relationship with the place.
Project description by Carmen Moreno Álvarez
After the end of the Spanish Civil War, the space next to the walls of the cemetery of Granada was the scene of the execution of 4,000 people. The project is a tribute to the victims, a place of remembrance for the relatives, and contributes to preserve the historical memory of this area.
The place of the project is a cemetery’s outskirts space that is located in the territory of the Dehesa of Generalife next to the Alhambra. It is surrounded by an olive grove, a path and a row of cypresses. The work starts from a reflection on how to project with the memory to turn the past into an element of living landscape and in close relationship with the place.
The new iron lattice of 43m length is located over an existing stone wall there. It is made from the information recorded on the deceased - name, place of origin, date of death and age -, a transparent and light element that is integrated in the territory without transforming it, a poetic resource that superposes the names and its stories on this emblematic landscape. The lattice allows to read the names of the anonymous people suspended in the air on the olive grove; also on the walls of the cemetery that still retain the holes of the bullets, elements that shape this area and now construct new landscapes around the names cut in the lattice.
Located against the light of dawn, the lattice produces a set of daring shadows that throw the texts on the topography of the land reaching to reach the walls of the cemetery at certain times of the year. As if it were a sundial, the lattice prints on the earth, the road and the walls the shadows of the names that changing according to the inclination of the light.
The gaps between the words can be used to place the flowers that the people brought in honour of the deceased. The circles that stiffen the trimmed iron plate can be used to house the bouquets of flowers. The lattice turns into a wall full of vegetation and colour on some dates, dynamic and loaded with symbology which provides contiguity between the collective memory, the past and the landscape.
