Archipelago of the Blessed

The term hermoso – one used by Canarian grandmothers to describe their islands and their babies – can be traced to its Latin root, formosus: literally, "full of beautiful forms." Torn between the tectonic plates of three continents, the Canarian archipelago has long been a microcosm where interrelated European and global crises converge and erupt. AAVS Canary Islands spent one week in 2024 learning in La Palma and studying the architecture of the relationship to four non-human entities fundamental to the history and prehistory of island life there – water, stars, volcanoes, and ferns. 

Faced with interrelated crisis – whether of climate, housing, migration, monocropping, extinction, drought – La Palmans have begun to bypass abstract instruments of mediation that commodify ways of living. Water now magically pours from our kitchen taps on demand. But these entities are always socially and politically constituted, common, and require reciprocal care. The people of La Palma (Palmeros) directly engage with infrastructure and ecologies, and experiment with forms of relating, free use, common ownership, care, governance, and enjoyment.

In what this project refers to as the archipelago as a method, the Palmeros form transnational alliances of knowledge and solidarity, as their practices are simultaneously locally situated and global. This exhibition presents a series of work made by AAVS students in response to the Palmeros ways of living.

Image credit: Charco Turquesa, Office Non-typological Architecture