Descripción de la Exposición
An initial study: from the ground
(to my love)
Trace fossil analysis provide evidence that the Homo habilis practiced geophagy 2 million years ago and Homo sapiens more than 150 thousand years ago. On the past 5 millennia, soil ingestion has been present culturally on peoples from different origins, and still today is common on the countryside of Brazil, in the south of the United States, on Haiti and many regions in all of the continents. Geophagy is used as a way to trick starvation, with medicinal purposes, as part of ritualistic precepts or simply due to personal taste and food culture. In the latter mentioned aspect, soil is used as an ingredient in recipes, as a garnish, in the dishes like cakes and cookies, in natura or just seasoned with spices. Many children and mostly pregnant women are affected with alotriophagy and have a yearning for eating soil, clay, mud, brick and other similar components unusual to menus.
On Brazil, a country in which more than 50% of the population descends from African people, geophagy was common among slaves between the XVI and XIX century, and the practice was punished with physical violence and the usage of “mascara de Flandres”*, whose image over Anastácia’s face still haunts the Brazilian imaginary. The “banzo” (a sort of deep longing for a past life in Africa, limit of the individual in face of the exploitation and dehumanization of the new continent) lead many black people to die of malnutrition or suicide. Deterritorialized, from an irretrievable distance from their land, much often the black slaves killed themselves through excessive geophagy, that is, took their own lives by eating too much soil.
Exposición. 09 ene de 2025 - 22 feb de 2025 / Galería Freijo / Madrid, España
Formación. 01 oct de 2024 - 04 abr de 2025 / PHotoEspaña / Madrid, España
