Emily Thompson | Inversions
The usual connection between art and botany is inversed in this installation: instead of mosaics and reliefs that imitate flowers and plants, in this case it is the latter –alive and dead– that give life to the stone. Thompson has chosen the most sober and monolithic part of the building, the south wall of the Patio de los Naranjos courtyard, to create three landscapes that have something fantastic, mournful and hopeful about them, despite their apparent harshness.
Like three open windows in the wall, the central installation pays homage to one of the most iconic trees in Andalusia, the olive, which is reborn here in a new habitat, whereas the two side installations invoke the plant decorations of the Mihrab. Thompson’s “inversed” view points our gaze to a dead nature that, through resilience, is always able to survive and imagine new landscapes.
“Our reverence is not reserved only for the living world of plants and flowers, but also for their ancestors as we seek beauty in decay. It is a inversion of the usual order of things.”
(Emily Thompson)
