© Xavier Ribas - Flowers (1998-2000) 10 C-Type prints size 89 x 106 cm. Edition of 6 - PDF
Flowers. Installation
The flowers at the side of the road mark the place of a tragic accident. They illuminate a spot in the road edge, that stretch of land that runs between the space for transit and the land it crosses harbouring residues and litter of both. Their presence fills the site they occupy with absence, as the site gets incorporated into the symbolic universe of a number of people. Franco La Cecla* defines the place of roadside flowers as the ‘shadow’ of the actual burial place, drawing a symbolic geometrical connection between the home, the cemetery and the side of the road. In many instances the flowers are not replaced as they fade into the multiple textures of the earth around them, the memory absorbed, metamorphosing, the place ‘of shadow’ becoming invisible. As Bachelard puts it: "not only our memories are ‘housed’, but also what we have consigned to oblivion"
© Xavier Ribas (2000)
*Franco La Cecla 'Sacralità del Guard-rail', in Sofia Boesch Gajano e Lucetta Scaraffia eds, Luoghi Sacri e Spazi della Santità; Rosenberg & Sellier, Torino 1990.
