Garden-EX-eden
While some people still believe in the idea that Paradise was here and will be again, perhaps in an afterlife, the stark reality of our planet's eco-systems appears to be furthering away from Paradise by the day.
The Middle East embodies the apotheosis of this paradigm. It is here, where the four historic rivers still run, if with difficulty, that the Western myth of Paradise was born, and where its graphic depiction was first elaborated in gardens. Yet, it is also here that the abuse of the land and rivers and the potential for terminal disaster have reached their peak.
From the notational system of four paths intersecting the plot, emerge nine piles of soil & seed-filled Ute bags. They are a genetic archive of vegetal species that holds the key to the re-establishment of the conditions of the so called ''Lost Paradise'' on a devastated land. They hold the promise of renewal and continuity of life. At an age where land untrodden by man is almost inexistent, the restitution of fragments of our ecumen to a state of wilderness is at the core of any attempt to reinstate Paradise-like conditions.
In our garden, the visitor is invited to meander on an artificial topography, through four dry ''canyons'', of varying heights and widths, paved in pebbles, with their walls of stacked up bags, and sprouting with green leaves and flowers. Yet, they are off-limits as one is kept from entering the ''wilderness islands'' they form.
In one of the ''walls'', the visitor discovers a ''window'' into the pile, which surprisingly offers a gaze at a place beyond reach: the horizontal tube that appears to be directed into a hermetic stack of soil is in fact an optical device reflecting the heavens above, using a hidden slanted mirror.
(Competitor's text)
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