O caso de Palmira (The case of Palmira) is presented as a subjective approximation to the figure of the “meiga”, the witch, questioning the conventional history and their portrayal as cruel and sinister characters of the collective imaginary. Through the portrayal of a specific witch, Palmira, Rebeca Lar aims to show all the facets of witches, questioning the negative derivations present in popular culture and proposing new readings: women transmitters of knowledge, healers, midwives, persecuted by Inquisition, outcasts, rebels, independent ... and also feminist icons.
The intervention builds a new idea of the “house of the witch” which recreates apothecary of a witch, a space half way between reality and fiction, the architectonic and the sculptoric.
Inspired by Scandinavian architecture and with wood as the main material, the house is integrated in the Forest of Galicia and invites visiting people to peek inside through the windows, to discover Palmira’s workshop. Fabrics, threads, needles, sewing and embroidery (techniques often used by Rebeca Lar in her artistic pieces), a table with different objects and ingredients related to the healing practices, as well as canvases and illustrations that refer to the project’s theme and that shape this symbolic space.
Sprayed on one of the exterior walls reads the quote “Chiara Fumai was here” as a clue for visiting people, and a nod to art history. The entrance door will remain closed except in specific moments such as the opening of the cycle, guided visits, or activities related to the intervention.
- Artist: Rebeca Lar
Rebeca Lar (Vigo, 1993) is a doctor in Fine Arts by the University of Vigo. In her PhD she studied the portrayals of witches in the contemporaneous audiovisual creations, an issue with which she also works within the artistic and literary realms.
She received awards from different institutions such as the Xunta de Galicia,The Loyola University of Andalucía, the Deputation of Ourense, the University of Vigo, etc. She was a part of collective exhibitions in different spanish cities, as well as in Cuba and Portugal. Among them are Lo (in)visible (The (in)visible) (Madrid, 2022), Identidades latentes (Latent Identities) (Galicia, 2020) or Alén dos xéneros: prácticas artísticas feministas en Galicia (To the other side of gender: artistic feminist practices in Galicia) (Vigo and Santiago de Compostela, 2017).
In her work the text is, simultaneously, material and concept. The latin origin of the word text – ‘web’, ‘fabric’ – supports an artistic creation that employs embroidered, repeated, defined, superimposed, crossed out, erased words ... retrieved with them the artistic and activist laboyr of the feminist pioneers.
- Curator: Clara R. Cordeiro
Clara Rodríguez Cordeiro (Ourense, 1983) is a founding member and director of projects of 7H Cultural Cooperative. Licensed in Art Hstory by the USC, specialist doctoral student in contemporary art, education on gender and Master’s degree in Art, Museology and Contemporary Critique (USC and CGAC, 2009). She develops, from 2008, her own projects in the curator and cultural management realm, defending with her work the importance of the processes of the creative community.
Her work includes the direction of the projects Mulleres en Círculo (Women in a circle) (Church of the University, 2016), Mutacións Urbanas (Urban Mutations) (Concils of Santiago and Teo, 2016 and 18), Elas tamén Pintan (Women also Paint) (Council of Santiago, 2017-18 and 21), Delas Fest (Hers Fest) (County of Santiago, 2019-22) and Utópicas, arte e territorio (Utopians, art and territory) (Auditorium of Galicia, 2022).
Previously she was a coordinator of the space of contemporaneous creation and experimentation A Chocolataría (Santiago de Compostela, 2006) and president of the cultural association [Sen Marco].
