Al cistell

Isabel Banal’s piece, In the Basket, from 2017, is part of a series in which an anonymous body is placed inside various everyday domestic containers, such as a carrycot, a bucket, a plastic fruit box and different types of baskets. In this case, the body picks up a basket, an object that invokes tradition, the countryside and peasantry, and which today has been relegated to folkloric status. It is a gesture that focuses the gaze on the weight that tradition has had in the development of Western cultures and on the fact that a good part of the work was done by women. The anonymity of the body in the image also portrays the forgottenness of the figure of the woman within a world – the rural world – principally associated with men and masculine roles. The tension generated by the body, faced with the impossibility of holding on, also generates a distortion when looking at it.

In the Basket addresses issues such as tradition and the preservation of the knowledge of yesteryear, such as ecology; climate change and the cycles of nature; and capitalism and postmodern society. It also touches on gender issues and the physical and emotional burdens of tasks ancestrally linked to women.