There was a time when immense forests filled four fifths of the European continent; where heaven, earth and all the elements present in it participated in a divine nature that was expressed in specific myths and rituals.
However, when the first militarized peoples began to impose a new way of understanding reality, the archetype of a creative Mother Earth of the world was replaced by Father Gods who legitimized the use of war based on divine guidelines. The natural environment was conceived as something external to the human being, instituted by the Creator to be dominated and transformed, thus generating the anthropocentric ideals by which modern civilizations are governed today. TERRA is a research project on the ground that, through the use of photographic language, approach the perception of space as a sacred place; in relation to the extensive and confusing variety of myths, gods and goddesses originated by the phenomena of nature. Under these precepts, this series invites the viewer to reflect on the influence exerted by the landscape on archaic mentalities; predisposed to contemplate the show that nature can offer to our senses, where the boundaries between the real or profane world and the dreamed or sacred universe converge.
About Mario Castro
Mario Castro Baro (born in 1987, Spain) is an artist based in León who uses photography as a connecting link between mind and nature. His work metaphorizes eternal conflicts such as inhabitant and habitat, reason and thoughtlessness, reality and fiction; the action of unconscious values in the empirical basis of knowledge. An approach where all notions of realism are replaced by lyricism and paradox, as long as they constitute a deliberate means of approaching the deepest and most archaic layers of psychology. [Official Website]
