Upgrade: Orchids for Potatoes
Fundación Rafael Botí. Cordoba, Spain. 2021
Part of ‘Error de Cálculo’, curated by Jesús Alcaide.
Potatoes, sacks, orchids, pallets

 

“We leave behind the crude nature of sustenance, for sophisticated objects that devour our eyes.

The oldest agricultural cooperative in Andalusia was swallowed in 2015 by an orchidarium in Estepona, Málaga.”

Perez Evans explores the concept of ecocide by examining how communities, towns, and collectives, once deeply connected to the land through practices like agriculture, are progressively uprooted by the systematic and constant devaluation and cheapening of their products. This leads to the abandonment of professions such as agriculture by families that have been tied to them for centuries. As these lands and their stewardship become exposed to speculation and ecocide, the families and communities, once united by cooperatives and neighborhood ties, fragment. In this apparent economic optimization, uprooting gives way to a neoliberal individuation that silences and destabilizes the voices and political structures of these previously collectivized groups, creating an epistemicide of knowledge and solidarities, and fostering an individualistic model of production and consumption that abandons both the local stewardship of the land and the political and collectivist spirit of the community.