Paula Botella Andreu. Landscape in Motion

Chairs arranged among the grasses. A group sitting with their backs to us, facing a hillside. Bodies drawing close to the ground and moving through the fibres. The photographs from the filming of Esparto: breves apuntes sobre una feminidad invite us to pause and consider gestures and their relationship with place.

Paula Botella Andreu has just shared this first glimpse with us. Following her participation in “Pensar la ciudad”, we return to an investigation that approaches landscape through the people who inhabit, work and transform it.

What the hands know

In Villarejo de Salvanés, the craft of working esparto grass provides the starting point for a conversation between craftspeople and three contemporary dancers. The film explores movements learned and repeated throughout a lifetime: the precision of the hands, their rhythms and their ability to pass on knowledge.

Through these gestures, the project explores a feminine memory rooted in care and domestic knowledge, also present in the men who continue the craft today. Dance offers a way of approaching this inheritance through the body.

Another way of looking at the landscape

Paula’s background in civil engineering and urban design meets artistic research here. Together with Yaiza López, who is also responsible for the choreography, she brings this perspective to the encounter between bodies, work and place.

The photographs reveal the scale of that relationship: figures against the earth, chairs among the plants, skin close to vegetation. The landscape makes its presence felt in every frame.

With filming complete, ART U READY presents these first images of a work whose development we continue to follow with interest. An opportunity to look again at familiar surroundings and consider how much of their history lives on in the practices of those who inhabit them.

About Paula Botella Andreu

Paula Botella Andreu. “Pensar la ciudad” archive · THE SIBARIST / ART U READY.

A civil engineer specialising in urban planning and territorial development, trained at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and The Bartlett in London, Paula Botella Andreu combines technical expertise with artistic practice. She has worked in international cooperation with UN-Habitat and the European Commission. Her research explores the relationship between the body, landscape and ways of inhabiting, with particular attention to everyday femininity. She took part in “Pensar la ciudad”, the group exhibition organised by ART U READY.

Read our conversation with Paula in “Pensar la ciudad”

Project credits

Esparto: breves apuntes sobre una feminidad
Dance film · Villarejo de Salvanés, Community of Madrid.

Initiated by: Cultural Dance Association LaChula (Yaiza López and Gonzalo Peguero), together with Paula Botella Andreu.
Direction and research: Paula Botella Andreu.
Co-direction and choreography: Yaiza López · LaChula.
Cultural mediation: Esther San Vicente · Al Fresco / Habitar el Esparto.
Filmmaking: Julio Portillo Vega.
Cinematography: Elena Campos Cea.
Soundscape: Enrique Muñoz and Conjunto Vocal Contemporáneo ALIVU.
Costume design: Lucía Conty.
Body awareness work with the esparto craftspeople: Isabel Calvo Villoria.

Dancers: Gonzalo Peguero · LaChula; Hugo López Castrillo; Adrián Prado.

Design and intervention: Irene Sempere (Mesa de Mezclas); Marina Kolovou-Kouri (ephemeral architecture); Sara López del Pino (textiles and networks); Hugo López Castrillo (esparto chair).

Villarejo esparto craftspeople’s collective: Luis Ayuso Huerte; Gregorio Martínez Panadero (Goyo); José María Torrez Domingo (Chema); Alejo Díaz Alcaide; Josefina de las Heras Rubi; Julián Díaz González and Antonio Díaz González.

Production: Iker Arcos, Lucía Galindo and Manuel Ayuso.
Grant management: La Tarea (Mar López and Clara Pampyn).

Images from the filming: provided by Paula Botella Andreu.
Portrait of Paula: THE SIBARIST magazine archive, “Pensar la ciudad”.

View the project presentation and full credits