‘During my residency at JOYA: AiR I created a new series of sculptures and interventions that aimed to explore new forms of agency and awareness within my artistic practice. The works, inspired by ancestral Iberian material culture, unravel potential reinterpretations of ritual power, archaeological heritage, national identity and cultural appropriation.

JOYA’s land and ecological knowledge encouraged me to create artworks that reflect on the permeable boundaries that define our world and the larger-than-human dimension that defines it. For five weeks I explored the role that materiality can play in the negotiation and production of authenticity, identity, myth and place, acknowledging this land as the complex network of reciprocal interdependence that it truly is.

I also followed the footsteps of “El Corro y el Rosao”, two (con)artists from the nearby town of Totana who in the early 1900s, inspired by local archaeological discoveries, sold hundreds of ‘fake’ artefacts to collectors and institutions all over the world —including the Louvre and the British Museum. I was privileged to spend a few days in Totana working with local potters, giving shape to new works while combining history, legend, beliefs and my own personal expectations.

At the end of my residency I decided to honour this land by making a ritual offering at a pre-historic cave in the Parque Natural de Sierra María-Los Vélez. Eight sculptures were carefully placed inside the cave: sentinels of local spirits and deities, expressions of an ancestral knowledge that is real and imaginary at the same time’.

Jorge Mañes Rubio

Artist / TED Fellow / Watch his TED talk here go.ted.com/jorgemanesrubio

Based in Amsterdam, Jorge graduated in Design Products from the Royal College of Art London in 2010. He is also co-founder of the Design Museum Dharavi, a TED Senior Fellow and a recipient of the S&R Foundation Washington Award. He has recently collaborated with the European Space Agency on a pioneering project revolving around the future colonisation of the Moon, turned into a thought provoking TED talk.