Lugares afines [Similar Places] (2004)
Etching and aquatint printed on fabric
141 x 123.5 cm
BA Collection
Inventory No.: 2004.99.1
Modern surveying techniques have developed on a par with other drawing applications (of the Renaissance ‘disegno’) as a means of anatomical, architectural, aesthetic or mapping knowledge. Inextricably linked to property and sovereignty, the accurate graphical depiction of the territory is perhaps the application that best reveals the original complexity of the drawing with the established authority (which is, we should not forget, is patriarchal). Taking the fabric as the medium for her imagined agricultural plans and using stitches to draw, Núria Batalla subverts these political connotations of surveying. Instead, she vindicates the traditionally feminised technique of patchwork, thus returning the depiction of the rural world to its inherent circular economy.
Núria Batalla (La Sentiu-LLeida, 1980) graduated in Fine Arts from Barcelona University. She strives to link thematic and technique, and researches the sensitive qualities of paper and fabric which are more skin than medium in her work.