Where the acanthus rest

This is a project that delves into the concepts of family, home, and companion species (dogs). It explores the fundamental question of what a home is, how one belongs to a family, and the idea of who accompanies whom. Through a photographic archive and a new imaginary, it tells the family history, weaving together the stories of different individuals, both human and non-human.

Family and home are two concepts that are both broad and specific, abstract and concrete. They are intertwined and dependent on each other, with the family creating a home and the home needing a family to exist and establish itself. We attach feelings and emotions to certain places that are full of stories, the home gives shelter to those experiences and its inhabitants. It seems that one concept cannot live without the other, it seems that they have to co-habit.

In Donna Haraway's "Companion Species Manifesto" (2016), she posits that there cannot be only one companion species, and that there must be at least two to create one. "Living with animals, inhabiting their / our stories, trying to tell the truth about the relationship, a co-inhabited and active story: that is the work of the companion species ..."

This project takes the perspective of the inhabited space and the family is limited to the members who live or have lived in it. The story told is the one that occurred within its perimeter, but this house has a hard time knowing what is happening beyond. The events of 2020 - the pandemic and home confinement - along with the intimate documentary subject in the master's degree in New Documentary Photography, were the factors that made the beginning of this project possible, an investigation of the archive and family history.

In this seemingly disordered, yet orderly, set of elements, the stories of some and others and others and some are intertwined. In the end, it doesn't matter who is who, or the actual events that occurred, but how we feel as members of our families.

The project raises questions about the individual's place within the family, their relationship within it, and how they feel both inside and outside of it. We are the amalgam of experiences, the family heritage, and part of the home that has been built.

One thing that unifies this family is that almost all of the dogs are buried in the same place, under the plum tree. Years later, hundreds of acanthus emerge every spring. How did they get there? Who planted them? It seems that nature also wants to be part of this story. In Vitruvius' book "De architectura" (30 BC), he tells the story of how stems and leaves of acanthus sprang up spontaneously from the tomb of a maiden in Corinth. In Christianity, the resurrection is also related to this plant. Are they trying to tell us something?