The Displaced Hive deals with humanity’s need for new aspirational goals and its current massification; the massive tourism of climbers on Mount Everest causing human traffic jams at the summit; the new space race among private companies led by wealthy magnates, transporting tourists to outer space for the first time; and the waves of immigrants risking their lives to reach borders that are as desired as they are inaccessible. All these scenarios illustrate how the same aspirational desire gathers people in such numbers that it ends up distorting the very process they seek to achieve.

The chosen form, like an altarpiece of narrative scenes carved in wood and printed on paper (woodcut), highlights how the same image emerges in different contexts and media, which the author describes as evidence of the Biology of Images.

THE WORKS

Central Scene
  1. Central Scene: A boy with a backpack, an immigrant, stands with his back to the edge of a cloud, looking at the starry space where a Blue Origin space tourism rocket, owned by magnate Jeff Bezos, flies. Below are elements he has encountered along his journey: thistle branches and other plants, birds, winged creatures, and a large land tortoise. A man crouching on the left constructs and arranges the scene. This composition references two important paintings, The Great Metaphysician (1945) by Giorgio De Chirico and Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich.
  2. Second Scene: A woman with a child in her arms crosses a somber landscape where several corpses appear.
  3. Third Scene: Climbers on Mount Everest and the annual plant that Johann Wolfgang Goethe drew in his book The Metamorphosis of Plants (1790).
  4. Fourth Scene: Two people rest inside a burning shelter while Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity aircraft flies above them, recalling its first crewed spaceflight in 2021.
  5. Fifth Scene: Inside Mount Everest, the first man to reach the moon in 1969 in the Apollo 11 spacecraft appears, along with his footprints and a large tree.
  6. Sixth Scene: A woman and a child walk behind leaves of the Ginkgo Biloba tree.
  7. Seventh Scene: Above Mount Everest, a crowd helps two people transition to outer space. Both wear protective helmets shaped like globes.
  8. Eighth Scene: The poem Venice is Empty 2019 by T. Millán, is inserted into a stone wall.

Venice is empty
While Everest is full
Crowding out silence
And fading space
World reshuffles
While men withdraw
To the vacuum that couples
With multitudes and masses

  1. Ninth Scene: Two sea turtles fly over Mount Everest. Turtles are part of the creation myth of the Earth in Indian, Chinese, and Native American cultures of the Great Lakes region in the USA, and are considered symbols of great wisdom and resilience.
  2. Tenth Scene: A land tortoise flies over Mount Everest. The image is inspired by a drawing by artist Melchior Lorck (1555) where a land tortoise flies over the Venetian lagoon.
  3. Eleventh Scene: A man and two children walk behind intertwined thistle leaves.
  4. Twelfth Scene: A man with a baby in his arms crosses Mount Everest. As he passes, a dead woman is being devoured by a vulture while another waits its turn. Impassively, a sea turtle flies over the scene.

13.Thirteenth Scene: Two climbers make their way through the vegetation.

  1. Fourteenth Scene: The footprint of the first man on the moon is shown on an unknown landscape.
  2. Fifteenth Scene: Mount Everest.
  3. Sixteenth Scene: A helpless man walks over the sea with his two daughters in his arms. The girls wear helmets shaped like globes. Next to them, a rocket from Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin is launched.
  4. Seventeenth Scene: Two climbers are shown immersed in a landscape.

Central Scene Episodes

THE ARTIST

Clara Carvajal is an artist who uses classical and contemporary social myths, disarticulating cultural frameworks to reveal meanings that often escape notice due to immersion within them. Her recent works focus on the biology of the image (a concept she developed), demonstrating how images can vary in medium, form, and technique without losing their meaning or essence.

She has exhibited in institutions such as the MAN National Archaeological Museum (Madrid); CGAC Galician Center for Contemporary Art (Santiago de Compostela); Centro Párraga (Murcia); Fundación Tres Culturas (Seville); Herakleidon Museum (Athens, Greece); Anima Gallery (Doha, Qatar); ACC Gallery (Weimar, Germany); Fondation Slaoui (Casablanca, Morocco). She has participated in the VII Contemporary Art Biennial of the ONCE Foundation and has developed projects in Morocco, Iran, Mexico, Beirut, and Germany. She is represented by Espacio Valverde Gallery.

Clara Carvajal lives and works in Madrid.

THE ORGANIZATION

This exhibition is part of the Hay Festival Visual Arts program. It has the collaboration, as organizer, of AIDA. The association Aida, Aid, Exchange and Development, founded in 1999, is an NGO that promotes the comprehensive development of disadvantaged communities and the improvement of their living conditions. Its mission focuses on effectively combating poverty based on justice, Human Rights, gender equality, and environmental and social sustainability. Aida coordinates with public and private institutions to maximize the positive effects of cooperation, committing to the principles of alignment, ownership, harmonization, and transparency.

Aida uses art as a tool to raise awareness about cooperation issues, inviting the public to reflect on poverty, its causes, and solutions. The work of Clara Carvajal, presented by Aida, offers a critique of the human need to achieve new goals, from those who risk their lives to escape misery, to the billionaires investing in space tourism, and those seeking to conquer peaks despite the dangers of overcrowding. This tableau invites the public to question the logic behind resource distribution, the decisions made, and their correctness, opening a debate on possible changes in resource management.