LO QUE ESTÁ JUNTO A LA ORILLA
Lo que está junto a la orilla (What Lies by the Shore) forms the point of departure for Bárbara Palomino-Ruiz’s artistic residency, developed within the framework of a collaboration between Orbital Residency in Santander and das weisse haus in Vienna.
Bárbara Palomino-Ruiz’s work brings together audiovisual media, drawing, and sculptural objects, with a particular interest in textiles and the relationships between ancient and contemporary technologies. Through her inquiries into technological heritage and textile and digital narratives, her practice has also developed into an investigation of the social production of memory, affective cartographies, and the role of fiction in documenting “reality.”
The project presented in this exhibition encompasses several distinctive aspects of her previous work, while focusing on the specific location of the residency: Barcenilla de Piélagos, in Cantabria, whose name can be translated literally as “a place beside a river or shore.”
Observing this environment led the artist towards a subjective and fragmented narrative structured around two elements that became central to the development of the project. The first was her encounter with a panoramic prehistoric drawing made with fingers and a partially abandoned archaeological excavation, both found in the cave of El Pendo. The second was the act of walking as a means of measuring and delineating the contours of the immediate surroundings—in this case, the River Pas.
The first encounter connects directly with the movement of the fingers: with the digital, precinematic forms, archaeological measuring tools, and one of the earliest representations of the self—the negative handprint. The hand, also present in another Cantabrian site, the cave of El Castillo, appears to return us to the moment when the individual became conscious of their own presence—“I am here and now”—but also to the moment when the body acquired dimension in relation to its surroundings. Through the proportions of the hands, the measurements of the body, and the extent of the surrounding space, the individual began to situate and distinguish themselves within the environment. This interest in the hand—at the intersection of representation, philosophy, and measurement—is articulated in a video presented by Palomino-Ruiz in the exhibition.
The second action leads us towards contemporary archaeological processes, systems of measurement based on hands and feet, and affective memories understood as part of the landscape. Drawing on these methods, Palomino-Ruiz created a series of thirty monochrome drawings connected through systems of measurement. These construct a fictional archaeological symbolism and an expansive, nonlinear narrative inspired by archaeological measuring instruments.
A related operation takes shape at the centre of the exhibition space. Resembling the apparatus of a scientific investigation, a sculptural structure evokes the grid as a system of proportion, measurement, and spatial delimitation.
Palomino-Ruiz also created a series of sculptural objects from stones, rocks, construction materials fused with natural elements, and remnants found along the riverbank. Gathered during the artist’s walks and explorations, these fragments of the landscape were progressively incorporated into her working process throughout the residency. Together, they evoke both human remains and the tools and materials of archaeological practice.
Finally, the artist presents a “real-time video”: a window within the exhibition space that is activated through the contemplation of the landscape and through the idea of the horizon, a recurring element in her work.
Ultimately, Lo que está junto a la orilla brings landscape, memory, and measurement into relation. Moving between past, present, and future, the project constructs a fictional narrative shaped by physical and temporal delimitations—an archaeology of the present. It offers a precise means of attending to and reflecting on our surroundings: the agency of materials, the presence of waste and remnants, and the shifting meanings of edges, limits, and borders.
Text: Jordi Antas
Exhibited at Centro de Arte El Faro, Santander, Spain.
