Theater of Land
Photography/Video Installation, 2020
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“Over the centuries, the Qur’anic metaphor of paradise as a garden
has been translated into myriad iterations of a Charbagh, a four-fold
garden with a fountain at its center. The Charbagh is replicated
throughout Islamic gardens, but also in secular and religious gardens
all across Europe. The motif was realized in tapestries as well,
perhaps the most famous of which was the sixth-century Khosrow
Carpet. During the colder months, this 25m x 50m jewel-encrusted
tapestry was unfurled indoors as an interior garden. As such, it
symbolized the king’s power to command the seasons. When the Arabs
captured Ctesiphon in 637, the carpet was cut into fragments and
lost forever. Its design, however, continues to be interpreted and
reflected across landscapes.
Architect
Antonio Bermúdez perceives the Charbagh as a poignant example of
oscillating representation and reality. Today man’s dread of
feral wilderness is manifested in the ersatz “nature” that
is gardening, intensive agriculture, genetically manipulated
crops, and managed biodiversity. Endeavors to tame or control our
environs have manifested into its wholesale (re)creation.
Bermúdez
observes this keenly in Westland, South Holland, called the “city
of glass” due to its rows of horticultural houses. To Bermúdez
this municipality is yet another Charbagh, comprised of endless
hothouses, vivisected by canals and streets. His photographs capture
these glass houses, which border the tightly-clipped lawns of
suburban homes, themselves captors of tropical vegetation. The Dutch
landscape reduced to the king’s Khosrow Carpet. For Bermúdez,
Westland, as for Europe write large, is becoming a succession of
representations, or mere fictions, of nature. It is his reckoning
with a future composed as a series of enclosed gardens.”
Amanda Sarroff, Writer and Curator.