The virtual exhibition SPOKEN PLANTS: VEGETABLE MEMORY ARCHIVE is a digital path through the contents of an exhibition with the same title open to the public since November last year and until the end of 2020 at the Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde (municipality of Viseu, Portugal).
Since their birth, the population of Portuguese rural villages was introduced to a series of relationships through which they obtain food, clothing and shelter; they symbolize the strongest transitions in their vital journey, they transform their own surroundings with works and tools, they take care of and graft domesticated and wild plants, they sow chosen seeds, in vegetable gardens and in plowed lands; they shroud altars and homes; they ask for protection against storms, they energize and purify with vapors, fumes and baths; they play with fibers, wood, fruits and flowers, building themselves and their place in the world.
Throughout 2019, a series of interviews were conducted in the villages of Várzea de Calde and Cabrum with men and women who were born between the 1930s and the 1990s, with the aim of talking about the various existing links with the plant world, which have developed over time. Starting from this objective, a series of sound excerpts were published and are now available to the public. These are part of a plot that we call an archive, in which, through digital technology, individual, family and collective memories rooted in the same territory are related.
The exhibition SPOKEN PLANTS: VEGETABLE MEMORY ARCHIVE started from the concept of archive, reflecting on the possible combination of a catalog of archived documents and the evocative presence of material elements: plants, images and sounds linked to plants and their local uses.
This exhibition is dedicated to those who slept on rye straw mattresses, to those who wore and wear some linen clothes, to those who think about what they eat, to those who choose what they eat or eat what they can, to all those who have sweated and avoid sleeping to produce food for their family and animals, those who keep a tool or a piece of furniture made by a relative, those who were cold, who wear clogs, who built their own toys, those who were moved by contemplating a landscape they inhabit, who stole a flower or do not forget an aroma.
Special thanks go to António Santos, Emília Bernardino, Herculano Gonçalves, Isabel Filipe, Joaquim Gaspar, Laura Filipe, Leonel Oliveira, Lorena Vicente, Lúcia Ferreira, Manuela Correia, Maria Cidália Santos, Mariana Campos, Mariyam Ali, Miquelina Campos, Virgínia Maurício and all the support provided by the team of the Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde, as well as the magnificent welcome from the community of Cabrum.
The exhibition SPOKEN PLANTS: VEGETABLE MEMORY ARCHIVE is part of the Viseu Rural 2.0 project, co-financed by the Viseu Cultura Program of the Municipality of Viseu.
Credits:
Fieldwork conducted by Ana Rodríguez (interviews and sound records) and Liliana Silva (photographic records)
Graphic design by Liliana Silva
Texts by Ana Rodríguez
Text translation by Luís Costa