1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ORIGIN Bleda y Rosa 12 17 19 22 25 17 June - 18 November 2018 FCAYC 8 10 13 15 18 20 23 26 28 30 9 11 14 16 21 24 27 29 31 Blind Spots I. 1. Homo sapiens 9. Hombre de Orce 17. Homo spyensis 25. Homo floresiensis The image of the origin of human beings and the origin in the limestone of the Neander Valley. Without underesti- of knowledge are often brought together, almost uncon- mating the earlier observations and reflections from a va- 2. Lucy 10. Cráneo 5 18. Hombre de Tautavel 26. Mrs. Ples sciously, in a sedimentary landscape. Not so long ago, the riety of sources throughout history, bearing witness to the historical and at times positivist trace of that knowledge age-old interest in discovering the origin and genealogy of 3. Ardi 11. Homo habilis 19. Cráneo de GIbraltar 27. Hombre de Cro-Magnon was established by the so-called ‘hard sciences’, predic- human beings, both fields attained real scientific status in 4. Ardipithecus kadabba 12. Hombre de Pekín 20. Hombre de Java 28. Homo antecessor tive and objective, which linked our origin as a species the mid nineteenth century as their study of the primitive to its missing links: genetic links, geographical links and societies of the Stone Age began to enable us to under- 5. Australopithecus afarensis 13. Cráneo de Modjokerto 21. Mandíbula de Banyoles 29. Hombre de Pacitan perhaps, among the most significant, symbolic links. All stand where we come from – we, here, being Europeans. 6. OH 9 14. Homo georgicus 22. Eurydice 30. Mandíbula de Sitges of these, together with the theories erected on the back of them, should be seen as successive markers on a scale In a sense, and according to the particular scenario in 7. Niño de Taung 15. Mandíbula de Mauer 23. George 31. Sangirán 17 constructed to gauge the milestones of evolution and where we find ourselves (creationist circles are clearly an differentiate the rational era from the irrational, while at exception), this is still the case: the origin of the human 8. Paranthropus boisei 16. Homo neanderthalensis 24. Hombre de Ceprano Vitrina. Atlas Vertebrae the same time other ‘soft’ scientific approaches nuance being and its derivations represent us – who migrated or critique immovable or unshakeable categorizations. where, when and how – and occupy a central role in the Hard and soft structures of knowledge in collision, as in western-based research and scientific literature on the the Earth or in a body, over questions of how to distin- subject as it has accumulated to date. Who does not have guish genetics and behaviours between chronology and their own favourite in this battle for survival and for sym- landscape that seem to overlap: what traits separated – or bolic primacy? Pointing out their weaknesses with regard linked – groups and their individual members from or to to other competitors is as politically incorrect as pointing Bleda y Rosa Curated by: Thanks to: Origen Rosa Yagüez Ana Neira Campos, Colección de Arte Contemporáneo de la Universidad de Salamanca, others, from Neanderthals to Denisovans or sapiens; in out our own. 17 June - 18 November 2018 CV Colección, Santander, Espaivisor, Federico Bernaldo de Quirós, Fundación Botín, which of these do we recognize the earliest signs of the Assistant curator: Santander, IVAM. Institut Valencià dArt Modern. Depósito Cal Cego. Colección de Arte human; what intellectual resources and abilities enabled II. Opening: Sunday, 17 June, 1 pm. Alfredo Puente Contemporáneo, MUSAC. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León. them to survive in an environment whose imaginaries and Moving the hips: from Africa, as seems likely, to Asia and Tuesday - Sunday 12 - 14 pm & 6 - 9 pm (June - September) landscapes have always represented it as inhospitable and to Europe; then Australia to America and the numerous 12 - 14 pm & 4 - 7 pm (October) hostile. islands of the Pacific, as the palaeoanthropologist María Dolores Garralda reminds us; leaping at first from branch These questions have followed radically different intellec- to branch in the forest and then moving on all fours on tual and formal paths, including those of anthropology or the savannah floor, until, about six million years ago, we palaeoanthropology, the latter effectively launched by the see some primates begin to use their hips in an upright fortuitous finds made by quarrymen in the Feldhofer cave, posture and walk on two legs. The privileges of bipedalism and language mark a symbolic boundary between Primate and And what about us? Are we perhaps a record of some landscape? List of works Hominoid, crucial for situating us in the atlas of evolution. Locat- Five hundred million years ago, DeLanda reminds us, ‘some con- ing those pelvises and discovering them where they lie, travelling, glomerates of matter and energy that were biological beings sud- 1. Homo sapiens mounted on sandwich panel, walnut 17. Homo spyensis 25. Homo floresiensis opening the earth at the scene of events to unearth them, whole denly underwent a mineralization, and in this way a new material Jebel Irhoud, 2017 wood frame and UV-shielding PMMA. Spy, 2007 Liang Bua, 2007 or in fragments, among other bones and remnants of joints, plant emerged for the construction of living creatures: bone,’ and con- Coloured ink print on Hahnemühle 124 x 222 cm. Coloured ink print on Hahnemühle Coloured ink print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Ultra Smooth 305 gsm paper Photo Rag® Ultra Smooth 305 gsm paper Photo Rag® Ultra Smooth 305 gsm paper and animal fossils or tools, is a substantial part of almost all of the tinues: ‘it is almost as if the mineral world, which had served as mounted on sandwich panel, walnut 9. Orce Man mounted on sandwich panel, wooden mounted on sandwich panel, wooden different theories of evolution. And yet, despite the appearance a substrate for the emergence of living beings, reaffirmed itself, wood frame and UV-shielding PMMA. Venta Micena, Orce, 2005 frame and PMMA. 124 x 222 cm . frame and PMMA. 124 x 222 cm . of decipherable linear chaos in the course of events or the ‘great confirming that geology, far from surviving as a primitive state of 124 x 222 cm. Colour photograph mounted with Fundación Botín collection Fundación Botín collection puzzle’ solvable thanks to a succession of new discoveries, we live, the Earth, had come to coexist fully with the more recently formed silicone adhesive on PMMA. as the philosopher Manuel DeLanda points out ‘in a world pop- soft and gelatinous materials.’ We might think of ourselves, in this 2. Lucy 124 x 222 cm. CV Collection, Santander 18. Tautavel Man 26. Mrs. Ples ulated by structures: complex mixtures of geological, biological, light, as a mineral footprint, one that bears an almost invisible Hadar, 2018 La Caune de l’Arago, 2003 Sterkfontein, 2008 social and linguistic constructs which are none other than accu- trace of the geological processes of the past. Coloured ink print on Hahnemühle 10. Skull 5 Colour photograph on paper. 124 x 222 Coloured ink print on Hahnemühle mulations of materials formed and solidified by history’. No doubt Photo Rag® Ultra Smooth 305 gsm paper Cueva Mayor, 2003 cm IVAM. Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Photo Rag® Ultra Smooth 305 gsm paper this is a world whose edges bear witness to the seismic action of It may be that the serial landscapes presented by Bleda and Rosa, mounted on sandwich panel, walnut Colour copy mounted on matte-finish Contemporary Art Collection, Cal Cego mounted on sandwich panel, walnut the successive theoretical and practical evolutions and collapses in since Origin first began to take photographic shape, in Forbes’ wood frame and UV-shielding PMMA. PMMA. 124 x 222 cm. MUSAC. Museo de deposit wood frame and UV-shielding PMMA. the various fields of knowledge whose task it is to explain it to us. Quarry at the foot of the north face of the Rock of Gibraltar in 124 x 222 cm Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León. 124 x 222 cm. This movement of bodies, spanning the most distant past and the 2003, vaguely constitute some class of that new category of the 19. Gibraltar Skull 3. Ardi 11. Homo habilis Forbes’ Quarry, 2003 27. Cro-Magnon Man present, is even today a theoretical, geographical and chronologi- visual postulated by Didi-Huberman: ‘images in spite of everything’. Aramis, 2018 Olduvai Gorge, 2008 Coloured ink print on Hahnemühle Les Eyzies de Tayac, 2004 cal ballet, continually shaken up by the latest scientific discoveries. Images for something difficult to imagine: the recondite geneal- Coloured ink print on Hahnemühle Colour inkjet print on cotton paper. Photo Rag® Ultra Smooth 305 gsm Colour photograph mounted with Eroded not only by the passage of time but also by the lapses of ogy of the human. In what direction do they point, what do they Photo Rag® Ultra Smooth 305 gsm paper 124 x 222 cm . Contemporary art paper mounted on sandwich panel, silicone adhesive on matte-finish PMMA, memory, it is analyzed by Bleda and Rosa in the ongoing series hide, are they even necessary? Undoubtedly they present places mounted on sandwich panel, walnut collection of the Universidad de wooden frame and PMMA. 124 x 222 cm. sandwich panel and wooden frame. Origin. A Walk through the Theories of Human Evolution, a work in that have been deposited in the collective memory of our species wood frame and UV-shielding PMMA. Salamanca. Fundación Botín collection 124 x 222 cm. progress since 2003, now expanded on the occasion of the present in the form of a foundational altar, but also places to which access 124 x 222 cm.