Flower Rock

An exercise in the search for (the life around) emeralds, tracing a journey through the mystery that surrounds the stone, focusing on the guaquería as a mining practice on the way to extinction.

The emerald has been present throughout the history of Colombia dragging with it sorrows and joys from pre-Hispanic times until today. Its mountains, dwellings of the gods according to the beliefs of the Muzo indigenous, shelter the emerald inside and they act as a vehicle towards a unique experience. According to popular legends that instant of encounter with the stone is surrounded by an enigma.

It is the this moment in which the green spell takes effect, a spiritual bond with nature arises, an energetic flow between stone and the human being. Time expands and its brightness floods the fortunate leading him on a transpersonal journey. But, according to the legend, this trip is not available to everyone, that is the power of the emerald: it only lets itself be found by certain people, it chooses who gets caught. Those ephemeral and suggestive moments associated with the emerald lived by the people involved in artisanal mining are the starting point of this project.

The project is an approach to open-air mining and artisan methods of extraction nowadays in danger of extinction and a claim to the sacred character linked to this practice. The project exalts the hidden condition of the landscape and the sacralization of the emerald mining practice and recovers the popular beliefs around the emerald that go beyond the economic value and that highlight the hidden power of the stone.

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