Aromas of the black island

From the sky, before landing, a small blackish island could be seen in the middle of an immense expanse of turquoise blue; flying over it, nothing was moving but the clouds that scud crazily from one part of the island to another. An open balcony and an empty street for the wind to pass through and permeate everything with its strong smell of desert earth and silence again, like a moonless night. This was my arrival in Lanzarote.

Lanzarote is land and sea, but it is also a perfume, the perfume of burnt earth, primitive earth. Perfume of seaweed and sea, of wind from the Sahara and dust. Of aromatic Malvasia. An aroma that accompanies you wherever you go, because Lanzarote is a land of contrasts and aromas, and in every part of the island you can find an aroma, a perfume that will lead you to complete your journey.

Starting from these premises, and from the interpretation of the landscape, of the island’s existing relationship between heaven and earth, my notes seek to go beyond the common encounter with the landscape, this should be taken as a pretext for developing the work, and there is no need to look for a topographic reference, a familiar image, not even a reference to the thousands of tourist guides that still exist to this day.

The landscape would not be a landscape without its smells, its own particular perfumes; the smell of the sea, of burnt earth, of desert dust, of the water that runs through its caves.

The landscape is that space for loss and mourning, for fear and doubt, but it is also for memory and recollection, for the reencounter with oneself and with one’s ancestors from tranquillity and solitude. And of course, the landscape is the horizon that accompanies us wherever we are even if we do not see it.

The piece we have between us is an object which sets out to to be a landscape, a horizon, the whiteness of the sea tied tight so as not to escape from those horizons that invade the island, and through them we can touch that burnt land with its strong smell, but it is also that aromatic perfume of the sea that envelops us.

Vicent Carda