Lugar Semente

The artist Maja Escher (Odemira, 1990) creates installations based on collaborative dynamics and fieldwork methods, involving drawings, found objects and compostable materials combined with riddles, proverbs and songs.

As resident artist for the third iteration of ‘Lugar’ [Place], a participatory project by CAM focusing on themes of citizenship, human rights and social justice, Escher worked over a period of nine months with 227 pupils aged between five and ten from Mestre Querubim Lapa primary school, in Lisbon, as well as teachers and a mediation team.

‘Lugar Semente’ was built up collectively around notions of ecology, imagination and fertile futures, based on interdependency between species, prompting reflection on what it means to be part of a greater whole.

What shape is my seed body? What are my roots? What do tree-beings and human beings have in common? These questions guided both thinking and making, with emphasis on reflecting on the transformation of a society eager to be more connected, communal and mutually supportive.

The project, which proposes a ‘forest-thought’ for the space of the CAM garden, blooms from the seeds of possible relationships between the different life forms, fitting into the pre-existing garden and proposing temporary cohabitation between living forest and dreamed forest.

‘Lugar Semente’ highlights the importance of civic participation and protest, celebrating union and singing together.