Marijo Ribas. Pedrada

At the airport scanners on the island of Menorca, approximately one tonne of stones and sand are intercepted and taken away by tourists as souvenirs. Another part travels in checked luggage to an infinite number of destinations. Most of these rocks will, at some point, end up being discarded. This geological plundering is blocked, the result of an agreement between AENA and the Consell Insular de Menorca. This is the starting point for Marijo Ribas’ research.

At the end of the tourist season, Marijo Ribas follows the trail of the confiscated rocks and gets to know Mestral, an organisation for social and labour insertion that depends on Cáritas Menorca in which waste reuse activities are carried out. There they separate the stones by colours—white, yellow, red, grey and dark grey—that correspond to the five eras or geological landscapes of the island, to which they will be returned as a form of real restitution.

In Mestral, she learns about another equally astonishing reality: that of the tonnes of clothes that are collected in this institution. Just as the rock-souvenir will travel to end up discarded, a part of the volume of clothing will end its journey in the textile landfills of countries in the global south such as Ghana, India or Chile, among many others. The artist masterfully unites these two realities, apparently formally and symbolically dissimilar, in a series of pieces that are fabric sculptures. These pieces, made from the patterns and images of the stones recovered in the 2024 season, show the photographed texture on the outside, and are filled to give them volume, precisely, with the recycled clothing that the same entity has already considered waste.

Both the destiny of the stones and that of the clothes is under the intervention of human action. The hand, literally and symbolically, selects and distributes them. A hand that separates and destroys, but, at the same time, restores and returns to nature what is its own. The sound piece that accompanies the images is a creation by Joana Gomila and Laia Vallès, in search of a possible and mysterious language in which these inert bodies, the stones, could speak to each other.

The project that Marijo Ribas unfolds in the framework of Biennal B addresses multiple issues and problems intertwined around the landscape and the economy, the result of the globalisation of the planet: from the temporary migratory movements of mass tourism to the consequences of repeated human actions on the same territory; from waste management to circular economies. All of them affect the fragility and sustainability of ecosystems and, in this case, focus on the pressure generated by tourism on an island that is a biosphere reserve.

 

Marijo Ribas is a visual artist, researcher, and designer. Her practice critically reflects on the representation of class and gender relations, identity geopolitics, and the preservation or exploitation of territory. From a multidisciplinary perspective, particularly influenced by photography, video, and installation, she reproduces scenes that embody a complex ideology.

She has developed exhibition projects in venues such as CENART (Mexico), FRAC (Corsica), Spazju Kreattiv (Malta), MUU Kaapeli (Helsinki), Ruse Gallery (Bulgaria), A7 Gallery (Slovakia), Hilvaria Studio’s Gallery (Tilburg, Netherlands), Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid), Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, ​​LABoral Centro de Arte (Zaragoza), Es Baluard Museu (Palma), and others. She has completed numerous residencies at production and research centers such as Lichtenberg Studios Berlin, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Belgrade AIR, Las Cigarreras Alicante, and MediaLAB Prado Madrid, among others.