Laura Palau’s artistic practice, based on image and time, arises from an ecological sensibility that understands nature as a teacher and healer. Rooted in ecofeminist and indigenous thinking, and nurtured by the knowledge of the countryside from her upbringing, her work is conceived care as a form of resistance, healing the fractures between the human and nature, the rural and the urban, the local and the global, trauma and healing. Often collaborative, their artistic explorations invite communities to participate as co-authors, reimagining our relationship with the natural world as co-authors, reimagining our relationship with the non-human world beyond a beyond the limits of Western thought.
At the heart of the exhibition is the practice of Tretzenades, a form of folk meteorology deeply rooted in the Valencian Community, Catalonia and neighbouring regions. This traditional method of weather forecasting takes place over thirteen days (tretze means ‘thirteen’ in Valencian), during which daily atmospheric observations are used to predict the conditions for the coming months. Once a practical tool for guiding sowing, pruning, harvesting and water management, the Tretzenades also served as a mnemonic ritual, codifying the community’s seasonal memory and aligning human activity with the cycles of the earth. The practice endures as a silent gesture of attunement, linking empirical observation with deep-rooted, ancestral knowledge.
The exhibition brings together a constellation of photographs of clouds, captured by Laura Palau, by friends of the artist and through images from archives. Together, these images form a collaborative archive of skies. a24> collaborative archive of changing skies, tracing the patterns mutable of the weather and inviting visitors to participate in acts of speculative interpretation.