Archive — 2016
"I have always been attracted to weeds. I remember collecting them at a very early age at my grandfather's farm in Gualeguaychú walking through Paraná delta. The place is wild heaven. Poison plants, poison frogs, alligators, huge boas capable of swallowing a cow, snakes, tomcats are just a few of the dangerous inhabitants in the Paraná Delta. I remember walking with my young cousins trough the uncertain forest, the oldest who was about 11, was carrying a rifle for protection. Nature still is certainly a hostile environment to man and man-made constructions in the Delta."
Pío Díaz
Weeds and their wild unconfined clash of nature-culture reveal that forced fragility of man-made ruled landscape. We constantly sophisticate the laws in which we inhabit our personal and social spaces.
We are in essence nature but coexist in the laws of culture. We escape nature with culture but nature is always right thereafter us in a fitness race for evolution. We mirror in nature but behave in culture. The more we understand the culture the better rewarded our social cognitive skills are. So we do not only fight nature but we fight nature in ourselves.
"Weeds are popularly seen as unwanted, valueless and troublesome plants. And the war against them is a strong one. So it was in the exploration of neglected spaces, wastelands and the wilder fingers of the city that they were found. Voracious nettles springing up in the unkempt corner of Solbjerg Kirkegård, blood-red poppies blooming beside an abandoned factory, beach rose clinging to the water's edge under Sjaællandsbroen." — Pío Díaz
The artwork consists of the placement of the subject through a stuffed method creating a hierarchy by juxtaposition displayed in great format glass boxes. Each piece is one of its kind. Weeds are some of the most acclaimed pieces by Pío Díaz.
