ARTISTIC RESIDENCE- ASALTO 2025

Aquí Plantada

«PLANTED HERE»

There are balconies in Épila that do not open onto the street, but onto the inside of a shared story. There, among clay pots, sheets drying in the sun, and leaves bending toward the light, an invisible botany blooms: the botany of everyday care.

“Aquí plantada” is an emotional catalogue made of cuttings, portraits, and silences. A blue archive where the protagonists are not only the plants, but also those who have held them, watered them, exchanged them, and inherited them. Women who, through a quiet gesture, have oxygenated their homes and the town’s landscape.

This project is an offering: to those who care, and to that which grows. A collection of living presences that reveal themselves in blue, to remain, if only for a moment, hanging in the air.

“Aquí plantada” is an artistic, participatory project inspired by Anna Atkins’ botanical catalogues. It seeks to make visible an emotional botany through an exhibition based photographic project centred on plants cared for by women in Épila. The work takes shape as a series of botanical cyanotypes made from real cuttings, accompanied by analogue portraits and short narratives gathered through conversations with their caregivers.

The project acknowledges and celebrates the invisible work of those who cultivate beauty from the balconies, pots, and planters that dress the town’s façades. It claims an unofficial flora: geraniums, money plants, spider plants, as a fundamental part of Épila’s landscape and affective identity. Each plant, each gesture, is an act of care that turns the everyday into something poetic.

This project also pays tribute to the role women have historically played in rural life. Their work has gone far beyond the home: alongside caring for plants, children, and domestic spaces, many have also sustained farm labour, the care of animals, and family economies. They have been, and continue to be, invisible pillars of life in villages. “Aquí plantada” is also a quiet tribute to their strength, their knowledge, and their everyday legacy.