This is an unpublished project premiered today on C41 Magazine.
Irmina Walczak (Polish) and Sávio Freire (Brazilian) have been working together since 2012. Their common projects and researches orbit around themes related to the family field and human relationship with nature. They explore this within a motorhome trip they are taking around Europe with their three children. They are authors of the photo book “Retratos pra Yayá” which means Portraits for Yayá in 2016.
About ‘Oasis: In our quarantine yard’ – words by Irmina Walczak:
“Oasis: In our quarantine yard” is a series created during 95 days of the confinement of our family in the Spanish countryside.
This series explores the experience of social distancing in a rural area where space is widened but at the same time human presence is scarce. Especially for children, who make the bars, the gate their window to the world. The contact with nature is intensified and a silence, leisure are filled by observing natural events. Simultaneously, the break with reality and its common rhythm, makes the imagination flourish. With the sunset, the restlessness, fear of death and concern for the world outside awaken. We all learn how to tame these monsters of the night and wake up light enough to appreciate the growth of our vegetable garden.
As travellers, we were surprised not only by the state of emergency declared by the Spanish government to avoid dissemination of the Covid-19 but also by hostile behavior of the police and some citizens driven by fear and panic. After three uncertain days and many unsuccessful attempts to find any open supply area, we decided to publish on our social media a help request. In a few hours, we received hundreds of comments and direct messages from unknown people that in an act of solidarity were offering us their gardens, country houses and were willing even to share their flats. We decided for the closest countryside option. We were received by Adrian, a young guy in the mask, who with his hand in a rubber glove handed us the keys and rapidly showed us the land and the house. In that moment, we felt as viewers and simultaneously characters of some futuristic film and these feelings of strangeness and duality accompanied us for the next 13 long weeks.
Through this work we aim to make visible an invisible experience – that of going through the Covid-19 quarantine far from a large city, in the rural area, in which contact with nature brings caress, but tension is enhanced by human absence, both visual and audible. We also want to shed light on the solidarity of those who helped us find our oasis and of all the others who, with their small gestures, improved the experience of the other in this difficult time.
