Paula Anta uses photography to explore the relationship between nature and culture. This is a classic theme in art, which has come back to centre stage in aesthetic and conceptual terms in contemporary works. Her photo series, with or without the backing of installations, explore the historical need of human beings to relate to and change their environment. That relationship has not always entailed maintaining a sustainable balance or making sustainable life choices. She focuses on some of the conflicts that thus arise. Her main method is the photographic cataloguing of various examples that make up a single set or unit, a hypothesis in globalised terms.
In Journal de Hotel (2005-2006) ['Hotel Journal'] the examples are pictures of hotel rooms from cities around the world. The shots taken are the same in all cases: a front-facing picture of a double bed that has been slept in. The sheets, blankets and pillows are part of a combined set that is always similar but always different: a common way of using the public/private spaces represented by hotels. Today they are our home, and tomorrow they are someone else's. The rooms are decorated in a middle-class style with canopy beds, classic pictures, woven headboards, wallpaper, etc. The front-facing viewpoint, which seems to mark a distance from the object portrayed, can also be found in the series Palmehuset ['Palm-tree House'] (2007-2010). It establishes a dialogue with Artificial Paradises (2008), the series to which three pieces in the Banco de España Collection belong. The spaces shown in the first piece are greenhouses, umbracula and pavilions set in botanical gardens in cities such as Bergen, Madrid, Vienna and Edinburgh, while the second shows artificial plant and flower shops in South Korean cities such as Busan and Seoul, in a fascinating emulation of a lost paradise. The similarities in composition between the natural vegetation (albeit in an adapted ecosystem) and the constructs in perfect, artificial bloom, denote the same inquisitive attention on the part of the artist.
She also sets up a dialogue between different ways of constructing or adapting the world of plants in the image of humankind.
Taking photos and then presenting them in a different setting is always a subjective action, even more so when a space is first modified to serve as a backdrop for the images taken. In her series Börus (2007-2009), Edera (2012) and L’architecture des arbres (2013) there are various interventions that continually seek to bring to light the power of nature when it invades spaces which are unexpected or not prepared for it. Offices and transit areas, non-places in the first case; an invasion of black-painted ivy leaves covering the floors, falling through gaps like dark torrents or crowning classical Roman architectural features with uncertainty in the second case; and the subtle appearance in the third case of bare branches of trees like apparitions in rooms, passageways and stairways with sober, elegant architecture.
Travel is an important element in Paula Anta's work. The series mentioned above are set in interiors, but there is another, later part of her oeuvre in which physical location is distinctive and determinant: in it she intervenes in larger areas of her surroundings. Cases in point are Tule Baleeje (2014), Laal (2016) and Nube ['Cloud'](2017) where black pigment, leaves painted red (laal in Hindi) and the creation of a dust cloud against the landscape, respectively, give rise to unexpected scenes. Khamekaye (2018) blends the importance of location (the Grande-Côte in Africa) and human intervention, with 'landmarks' stuck into the beaches (khamekaye in the Wolof language) that simulate human beings and animals but are made of branches, sticks, nets and plastic, marking the entrance from the sea to inhabited areas.
Paula Anta uses photography to explore the relationship between nature and culture. This is a classic theme in art, which has come back to centre stage in aesthetic and conceptual terms in contemporary works. Her photo series, with or without the backing of installations, explore the historical need of human beings to relate to and change their environment. That relationship has not always entailed maintaining a sustainable balance or making sustainable life choices. She focuses on some of the conflicts that thus arise. Her main method is the photographic cataloguing of various examples that make up a single set or unit, a hypothesis in globalised terms.
In Journal de Hotel (2005-2006) ['Hotel Journal'] the examples are pictures of hotel rooms from cities around the world. The shots taken are the same in all cases: a front-facing picture of a double bed that has been slept in. The sheets, blankets and pillows are part of a combined set that is always similar but always different: a common way of using the public/private spaces represented by hotels. Today they are our home, and tomorrow they are someone else's. The rooms are decorated in a middle-class style with canopy beds, classic pictures, woven headboards, wallpaper, etc. The front-facing viewpoint, which seems to mark a distance from the object portrayed, can also be found in the series Palmehuset ['Palm-tree House'] (2007-2010). It establishes a dialogue with Artificial Paradises (2008), the series to which three pieces in the Banco de España Collection belong. The spaces shown in the first piece are greenhouses, umbracula and pavilions set in botanical gardens in cities such as Bergen, Madrid, Vienna and Edinburgh, while the second shows artificial plant and flower shops in South Korean cities such as Busan and Seoul, in a fascinating emulation of a lost paradise. The similarities in composition between the natural vegetation (albeit in an adapted ecosystem) and the constructs in perfect, artificial bloom, denote the same inquisitive attention on the part of the artist.
She also sets up a dialogue between different ways of constructing or adapting the world of plants in the image of humankind.
Taking photos and then presenting them in a different setting is always a subjective action, even more so when a space is first modified to serve as a backdrop for the images taken. In her series Börus (2007-2009), Edera (2012) and L’architecture des arbres (2013) there are various interventions that continually seek to bring to light the power of nature when it invades spaces which are unexpected or not prepared for it. Offices and transit areas, non-places in the first case; an invasion of black-painted ivy leaves covering the floors, falling through gaps like dark torrents or crowning classical Roman architectural features with uncertainty in the second case; and the subtle appearance in the third case of bare branches of trees like apparitions in rooms, passageways and stairways with sober, elegant architecture.
Travel is an important element in Paula Anta's work. The series mentioned above are set in interiors, but there is another, later part of her oeuvre in which physical location is distinctive and determinant: in it she intervenes in larger areas of her surroundings. Cases in point are Tule Baleeje (2014), Laal (2016) and Nube ['Cloud'](2017) where black pigment, leaves painted red (laal in Hindi) and the creation of a dust cloud against the landscape, respectively, give rise to unexpected scenes. Khamekaye (2018) blends the importance of location (the Grande-Côte in Africa) and human intervention, with 'landmarks' stuck into the beaches (khamekaye in the Wolof language) that simulate human beings and animals but are made of branches, sticks, nets and plastic, marking the entrance from the sea to inhabited areas.