1. Board an iceberg
2. Plant a flag
3. Claim that nation is mine.
Through these performative actions in which several icebergs are boarded to give them nationality and flag the viewer is invited to question terms such as country, nation or nationalism. Abstract concepts that, although lacking objective solidity, are sources of continuous disputes.
"No nation exists physically, that is as an objective entity.
Its nature is liquid and intangible. Its basis is a mental construction present solely in the collective imagination. All war, all state violence and all forms of government are based on the idea of nation. However every nation is like an iceberg floating on the sea, doomed to be diluted."
The visual translation of this thought is a series of "Iceberg Nations".
Icy endowed-with-a-flag islands coming from the interior of greenland that now sail to the drift. The "indlandis" is a cyclopean volume of ice whose age can vary according to the stratum between 0 and 100,000 years old. This huge mass grows and moves towards the periphery ending in glacial fronts where it cracks into icebergs. These thousand-year-old icebergs are used by the artist as a metaphor, giving them nationality just when they are about to be diluted.
“Iceberg Nations” belongs to STUPID BORDERS, a set of conceptual projects that questions the idea of "nation” and points at the strange feeling of possession that man exerts towards the Earth, an entity that transcends him in age.
Rubén Martín de Lucas (1977, Madrid) is an artist with a peculiar background. In 2002, he graduated as civil engineer, and from 2001 to 2015, he worked in the field of urban art with his collective Boa Mistura, developing projects all over the world.
In 2015, he began his solo career with focus in “landscape and associated behavior”. His projects evolved from painting to more conceptual processes, expanding his language to photography, video and actions in the landscape.
As center of his concerns are the humankind relationships with territory, studying aspects such as: the gradual reduction of space for wildlife, “The Naked Trace“, the overpopulation, "Genesis 1.28", the artificial character of the borders "Minimal Republics", the liquid nature of the concept of nation: "Iceberg Nations" or the dichotomy between industrial agriculture and natural agriculture: "The garden of Fukuoka".
He has presence in important collections, specially within Spain, and is beginning to exhibit abroad like the two solo shows that will take place in late 2019: one at Lianzhou Museum of Photography, China, and the other at Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal, as winner of 2018 “Emergentes” award.
Minimal Republics
Through a simple gesture in the landscape
- Appropriating 100m2
- drawing a border
- and inhabiting it for a day
The artist creates a series of absurd micro-nations that invite us to reflect on the nature of every frontier and the very concept of nation. Republics whose limit always responds to an artificial criterion that is geometry, whose duration never exceeds 24 hours and whose only inhabitant is the artist himself.
Ridiculous and absurd states, whose documentation in the form of aerial photographs, becomes as poetic and visually effective as deep in its meaning.
This series belongs to STUPID BORDERS, a set of conceptual projects that questions the idea of "nation” and points at the strange feeling of possession that man exerts towards the Earth, an entity which transcends us in age.
Minimal Republics project includes a documentary short film (5min) https://vimeo.com/237301549 and a video installation.