Days in the Countryside

Something that drew Iñaki Bonillas’ attention was the recurrent presence in the  J.R. Plaza Archive photographic albums of pictures of the family, in different periods of its history, eating alfresco or just spending time together in the open air. As the chronology moves forward in time, these days in the countryside become less and less frequent in the collection, until they finally disappear towards the 1990s.

With Días de campo, Bonillas sets out to speak of how it has become increasingly difficult to get to the countryside in the present day. Urban stain makes it look more and more like a mirage, a kind of separate dimension, to which no highways lead, as if it were an artificial paradise.

How fragile appears the bubble that surrounds us as we foray into nature, and how difficult it is to get rid of it, pop it or leave it behind. All those tablecloths and blankets laid across the ground — don’t they act as a kind of membrane? We need something to regulate the invasion by the environment, not simply by the ants and the dirt, but by the outside itself, and its overwhelming presence. Nature seems to be ever-ready to engulf us, to colonize us. The country is now seen more like a territory of nostalgia than a possibility that could be reached. The countryside as a region of nostalgia. Those sunny spots among the trees, those still-crystalline creeks — do they still exist?

So as to illustrate these reflections, the artist uses certain images from the archive that portray this almost obsolete habit of outdoors family gatherings. Bonillas presents them to us as diptychs where a rupture could be perceived; a break, that is, not only with an old tradition, but with an almost extinct way of relating to nature.