Gabriela Albergaria is a Portuguese artist who lives and works in New York and that defines her work as the idea of rebuilding times, observed or from mechanisms of feeling. The idea of a physical location that awakens the desire to create a particular piece and the landscape in the cultural sense, not the "wild" landscape.
In your own words, his work reflects a social, political and cultural environment where does that fit these strands into pieces of art related to nature?
Gabriela Albergaria: What happens is that any place that I leave is a physical place and real. It is always a set of things that are the domain of culture, social and political. What interests me in a place is to realize how I would read it, what is it story, this is related to the contemporary, what decisions were taken to be that certain way and what are the points which may be of interest here. It is in this sense. It is a confrontation with us and we are social and political beans.
The landscapes in your work are decontextualized, such as the tree, why you always decide to reinterprets them?
GA: No, it's not always like that. Maybe it was what I chose to present here because the theme was "the place and representation." From a place I departure for the real thing and the works do that, the tree appear by chance, I have no specific reason, there is an allure to try to know it, were the circumstances and the visits I did to several gardens. Everything happens naturally in my work. The question of the decontextualization is that I like often to find solutions that are already exist in nature and how it is well done I can dock them to those things that already exist, I can draw attention to certain points that interest me. It is a product of my work. I am more interested to perform a new thing on a certain topic.
Some of the works can be very violent.
GA: Exactly. When you see these trees they part of a poetic moment, then are extremely violent, because they are made with fittings, maybe follow a language of the sculpture. When I put a branch it cannot fall, I have to find a way to grab it, and then I found this language that comes from the gardens, fences and bridges. All solutions are on the way to work nature. It's a violent language, because it is inside a museum, a room, we look at it another way. If you saw a tree in nature excoriated with a wood that has a screw to hold, you wouldn't say the same thing. My work is always found in nature
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You visited several gardens in various parts of the world. Why?
GA: Gardens, but not only, landscapes, natural places, they interest me. Walks thru nature, with my feet on the ground. It's what I like.
How do you choose that tree, that place, that particular landscape that interests you?
GA: Those are elections, which are not just one. I'll see a garden, a landscape. When I did, with Nuno Henrique, the king's path, I know that something will turn up into work, because it slide, because it was difficult, it had amazing trees, because he knew the names of all endemic and introduced plants and I had this kind of introduction along the way. When I take all this stuff to the studio and start looking at it, the photos, what wrote and begin to remind me of what I saw for sure that something will happen, because I want to do work on it. Now, I cannot say exactly how. I know that in the art piece the elm, I enjoyed making sculpture of a tree, but wanted to find a species that was interesting, a story. We've been working almost a year in Lisbon looking for anything around the trees until they found an elm, a species that is endangered in Europe, because they have a disease and this was the last on the Avenue of Discoveries, is the same side of the CCB (Cultural Center of Belem), is part of all that urbanization plan and that was interesting. Had a dimension that I liked, those arms could embrace without being too small or too large. There was more or less a body and I thought I could do something with it. The other tree of Vancouver was a bit the same, I found it interesting that a tree in a country that is known as the most natural, unpolluted, that tree die of stress. It was brought from another shore by locals who had nostalgia of this species. These stories are important to me.
Now, you are visiting natural parks in the U.S. and said that there is a difference that arises in relation to Europe which is the size issue.
GA: We no longer have space because everything is built, and then is transformed by agriculture, we are not well aware of the extent of a wild place. The length of a river that comes directly from the mountain and that nothing touches, we do not have that in Europe. So, I'm having further contact with nature that I had not.
Throughout your artistic career, you had always developed various components, from photography, drawing and sculpture?
GA: It is been happening. First I studied traditional painting, I stopped painting and started doing more photography, sculpture and mixed it with drawing. I always drawn, but not always mixed the final product, it was understood as a process and there is a time when everything comes together and with the maturity of the work. It is growing and it makes sense to mix the two things in my case.
www.gabrielaalbergaria.com
