HUMILITAS
“[W]hether nature is debased into an exploitable domain of calculation and organization [...] or whether, as the self-secluding earth,
it bears the open realm of the pictureless world”
Martin Heidegger
Humilitas is a still photography and expanded media project that considers our geological belonging with the earth. What can the earth teach the image about restraint, humility, and the human’s place on this planet?
Today, debates on environmental crisis and sustainability position the human being either as perpetrator – proposing to label our era ‘the age of the anthropocene’ – or else on the very brink of extinction. This limit situation opens up our seeing of the natural world around us, appealing to a renewed awareness of organic and mineral life through the ages that geologists call 'deep time'.
Humilitas enquires into 'the humble image' – an open, reflective image from which we may stand naked, before ourselves, the world and the earth. In a call to a poetic seeing that lies beyond the concrete shape of our surroundings, the humble image is at once exposing and sheltering, interrogating and safeguarding.
Premiere: Centre d'Art La Panera, Lleida, 2024. To preview the works (galleries, curators, scholars) please write to studio@isabelrocamora.org.
Image: Earth Abyss #1, Humilitas series, 2023.
This project has been researched and produced in residence at CAN Farrera, Catalan Pyrenees, with the support of the Art and Nature Award. Funded by: CAN (Centre Art i Natura, Farrera). In partnership with Centre d' Art La Panera and supported by Ajuntament de Lleida. The artist thanks The Tàpies Foundation and Pompeu Fabra University for access to research resources. Year of Production: 2023.