Made in Mirrors

THE LOST PARK

A film, a poem and drawings by Maria Barnas.

To be seen at the Schunck* in Heerlen

From May 10^th – August 15^th 2010

THE LOST PARK is a result of Maria Barnas MiM residency in Recife in spring 2009 where she researched the recently restored park Praca de Euclides da Cunha designed in 1935 by the Brazilian landscape artist, Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994).

Burle Marx created his first gardens in Recife. One of them, the Praca de Euclides da Cunha was inspired by the book 'Rebellion in the Backlands’, written by Euclides da Cunha, in 1902. In this book Da Cunha used the geology and the botany to rewrite the history of northern Brazil.

Burle Marx designed a garden on the basis of this book, using succulents and cacti taken from the regions described by da Cunha. Over the years, the garden became abandoned and overgrown. The homeless who lived there would throw away the pits from eaten mangoes, which grew into enormous trees. Later, the local council planted scrubs, and soon there was nothing left of Burle Marx’s original concept.

As for most of his gardens, records have gone missing. No original drawings whatsoever could be found of the square, or the Euclides da Cunha garden. So the restoration, which took place in 2004, was not based on the original plans by Burle Marx, but on people’s memories of the garden.

Barnas made an animation based on photos of Burle Marx’s gardens taken from books, photo’s of the cacti he used and real cacti. It was from this material that Barnas created photographs and short film clips. What she aims to show is that a place is not just a physical space, but also a metaphor for the need to preserve history and, primarily, to distort it. “For that reason I’m interested mainly in the fiction that comes about when someone tries to give form to history”, Barnas explains.

The second part of the film consists of documentary material from Recife. Barnas interviewed various people about the park: the architect who restored the park, a fellow architect who could simply not understand why you would want to restore a park, an angry artist who argued that the park had been wrongly reconstructed, people on the street who missed the shade of the mango trees, and a man who suddenly burst into a bout of singing. In addition, a role has been set-aside for a woman who knew the park as it once was. Her voice puts into words the impressions of Barnas in the form of a poem.