Circle of protection was an intervention that I made in the landscape of Quillagua and was characterized by the simplicity of the action, functioning as a signal. One of the key ideas that led me to think about this work, was based on the attempt to generate an own space in a hostile environment. A circle of salt around my figure, which protected me, was the image I pursued and the action I took.

In formal and symbolic terms, I was interested in the circle as a figure that refers us to the cycles of nature, to the circularity of certain natural processes. I took the salt as raw material of the drawing, since it seemed to me an element compatible with the idea of ​​the action and that worked, in metaphorical terms, with the landscape environment of Quillagua.

I believe that salt as a mineral element dialogue harmoniously with the desert, the drought, the heights and the winds. It was not an external element to the landscape, but it was attached to it in an almost natural way. I also found it interesting to generate the gesture of protection in an inhospitable landscape, characterized by the adversity caused by the looting of contemporary capitalist mining. I think we must point out the places to appropriate them, to signify the spaces to understand them, to generate gestures in the landscape to indicate situations.

This intervention in Quillagua worked as a symbolic action that also contained a political interest, based on the need to reflect on the natural and cultural possibilities of building habitable environments through art.

Mariano Gusils
(Salta, Argentina)