Palm Observatory

“A palm tree planted in a city is nothing more than a symbol of an enslaved and mutable nature whose survival depends on the development needs of urban services. But what remains of its growth, the aggressions it has suffered and of the changes going on around it?” To answer this question, the artist decided to put us in the “palm tree’s skin”, as it were, so we could feel its surroundings as a fixed, immobile observer. To do this, he built a pinhole cabin around the tree, as an extension of its trunk. Inside, it’s like being in a camera obscura with little spy-holes through which to see the world turned upside down. This observatory is also a space for meditation and recreation and of harmony with nature. It could also serve as a potential zone of communication with the tree so that we can find our place in the universe through the mediation of this interface between the heavens and earth. Inside the camera obscura, an iron maiden with tiny shafts of light, we get the curious sensation of mediumship, of being a visionary wrapped in the symbology of the tree of light and its healing, restorative balm.