Defensem is an art installation by Anaïs Florin, located in the upper cloister of the La Nau Cultural Centre. This work is linked to the “Archivo ecologista. Memoria y cultura visual del ecologismo valenciano desde los años setenta” (Environmentalism Archive. Memory and Visual Culture of Environmentalism in Valencia since the 1970s) exhibition, curated by Alberto Berzosa and Jaime Vindel.
Florin’s work joins activism and artistic production by developing two mutually reinforcing layers. On one side, there is her collaboration with independent hybrid and archival spaces, such as El Punt. Espai de Lliure Aprenentatge and A Hores d'Ara, in which she has researched on Valencian environmentalist imaginaries and designed methodologies to give visibility to their documents. On the other, she creates works that are formalised by interventions in the public space. She appropriates classic activism formats through the use of banners and posters, in which she includes mottos and messages inspired by the documents preserved in the mentioned archives. Florin shows these slogans in a distanced manner, decontextualised from their place of origin.
In Defensem, Florin retrieves multiple historical claims of Valencian environmentalism, updating and revitalising the politic and poetic contents’ value of the exhibited archives. It thus functions as a time tunnel that connects and vindicates the different moments in the history of environmentalism in order to give a look into the future from the past.
ENVIRONMENTALISM ARCHIVE. MEMORY AND VISUAL CULTURE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM IN VALENCIA SINCE THE 1970s
