Photographic Alphabet: L is for Rubén Martin de Lucas
Minimal Republics
Minimal Republics is a set of actions that questions the nature of the concept “nation” and the physicalization of its boundaries in the form of frontier as an ephemeral and artificial limit.
The results of these actions are “ephemeral micro states” such as a circle of plaster in a fallow land, a triangle delimited by wood slats that float on a huge reservoir inhabited with the help of a life raft, a square in a parking lot delimited with traffic cones, etc…Republics whose limit always responds to an artificial criterion that is geometry, whose duration never exceeds 24 hours and and whose only inhabitant is the artist himself.
These are ridiculous and absurd sites. The documentation, n the form of aerial photographs and videos, becomes a set of works as simple in the aesthetic but deep in their meaning. Poetic and visually effective gestures whose simplicity and irony invite us to reflect on the artificial and ephemeral nature of every frontier.
Minimal Republics belongs to “Stupid Borders” a group of conceptual projects that questions the idea of “nation” and points at the strange feeling of possession that man exerts towards the Earth, an entity which transcends us in age.
To see more of Rubén’s work, visit his website here