Augustine Parades | « The Bitter Taste of Sweetness »

Site-specific installation, acrylic on canvas, bilingual publication, sound piece, performance

 

‘The Bitter Taste of Sweetness’ is a varied body of work that tells us with candour: the sweetness of dates carries the burden and bitterness of their harvest. By going back and forth between his writing work and the various other disciplines he practises (painting, photography, publication, musical creation, and performance), Augustine Paredes deploys his narration through a multiplicity of objects. Integral to the work is a first-person story about a farmer-labourer hired by a farm owner looking to tend to his trees and harvest their dates. This story, where realistic and fantastic notes are mixed, is accompanied by a collection of poetry written from three perspectives: the universe’s, the palm tree’s, and the farmer’s. Both are central elements of the zine published by the artist, and are also the common thread to the set of shimmering paintings that he presents in a crystalline pavilion in the palm grove of Mabiti AlUla. The paintings illustrate the scenes and characters of the farmer-labourer’s story and yet digress from it to become images that convey their own independent narratives. The inside of Augustine Paredes’s pavilion is bathed in the sounds of his poems, transformed into electronic lullabies that he composed throughout the residency.

Mabiti Hotel, AlUla, Saudi Arabia
18 February 2023 — 18 March 2023

Curators, The Palimpsest of Time
Manifesto Paris
AlUla Artist Residency
Afalula