Secale cereale or how straw has nourished our spirits

2024

Project carried out thanks to the Tximist Research Program in Contemporary Art Practices, presented in December 2024 in Girona, Spain. Última Vértebra.

Theoretical work and installation of documentary material, popular craft objects, photocopies and archival material, and photography.

At the end of summer 2016, in Almenar, an elderly farmer from the border region between Catalonia and Aragon showed us how to make a thick braid with rye straw. The braid was made to hang in yards or chicken coops, with the wheat spikes facing down so that birds and hens could peck at the grain. Like weaving game he had learned as a child, it offers us a glimpse into a way of life linked to the land and agriculture. At that moment, I sensed that this braid represented an incalculable connection to the world, despite going unnoticed in the anonymity and simplicity inherent in craftsmanship. A ritual expression of a culture tied to a land that is on the verge of being forgotten. Now I see that braid as a small remnant of a way of life of a community that is in cohesion with the cyclical nature that surrounds it, while contributing to the construction of its identity.

Straws from different cereals have been braided in many places as a ritual of gratitude for the harvest. Wheat braids were made at the end of summer with the strands of wheat collected after the harvest and used to decorate the doors and windows of houses, churches, and streets, asking good luck for the next harvest. In addition, wheat dolls were made as symbols of the spirit of wheat and as good omens.

I have set out to collect some of the few vestiges of ritual basketry made of rye straw linked to the agrarian world, in order to try to understand them as an analogy between material remains and the ability to capture the magic of the world. These traditions are a thin, golden thread of continuity with the symbolic dimension of the past.

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