"The beauty of it all" Installation (2006)

Provincia creativa

To be called provincial is essentially to be made fun of, or to be insulted. You're out of the loop, unfashionable, lagging behind. However, it can also convey something positive, for instance when we describe a place or an activity as having "provincial charm", or when we refer to something as "provincially genuine", suggesting a preserved state of naiveté or innocence that, by implication, has been lost in the urban centres. Literally, the word simply refers to an area controlled by a state or city, or, in the original meaning of the word, by the Roman empire. That empire is now gone, and much of the power it once represented is today concentrated in the corporate world. In that sense, the physical meaning of the word provincial has been lost, because very few people are located in the actual centre of global power.

As a very young girl, I saw a map of Europe for the first time, and it made me burst into tears, because I suddenly realized how infinitely far away my tiny Nordic hometown was from the continent, where things were really happening. That feeling of being cut off from "the Big World" is now almost entirely gone as a result of increased travel opportunities, ongoing globalisation, not to mention the internet. From an artist's perspective, I see the notion of "provincial" more as a state of being. I am more than happy to live in a creative province. I prefer to maintain a certain level of innocent isolation and naive joy of discovery, although it may be an illusion.

- Madeleine Park

 

"The beauty of it all" Installation (2006)