Emerge, 2013  

Emerge is the name of a series of photos of urban flower beds, showing the crossroads of nature bounded in the city. They are micro spaces witnessing human behavior and the plant´s world that struggles to overcome any obstacle to strengthen and extend life.  

Urban Eco-poetics, 2013
We may think that all the flower beds are similar, rectangles of land framed by a cement border, with a tree planted in the center.

But not. When walking the paths, they are discovered as enclosures of various dimensions, shapes and states, depositories of the most diverse situations. From those which have a tile size, to others that melt into no man's land.
Surrounded by neat black bars with polished bronze tassels, or by precarious interweaves of wood and rusty wires. Others of diffuse edges, expelled from the horizontality of the sidewalk because of the growing pulse of robust roots that emerge from the depth of the earth.

Trees with thick black trunks that almost don´t fit in the miserable square that was assigned to them are neighbors of rachitic branches propped up by dubious tutors. Vegetable couples united in an eternal embrace coexist with dark, compact jungles. Magazine gardens, geometric manes, California landscapes, exquisite ikebanas, follow the line of the Caribbean palm tree.

In some neighborhoods, vacant flower beds remind us that once, in that piece of land, there was no city, nothing, only pampas and pastures crossed by unnamed streams. Perhaps those small reserves still keep the memory of the glyptodont.

A separate chapter is formed by the universe of elements that don´t belong to the flower bed who intercept time and space speaking of others, those who pass and leave an ephemeral trace. Chained motorcycles, shoes from a fair, disjointed clothes, or couch shreds, give them a certain scenographical aura.

Often construction materials left over from private works await second uses. Not to mention trash, dog poop, paper and bottles of soda.

Some flower beds are full expressions of the way of life and personality of the neighbor who lives in that address. For example, the great idea to plant a pot in a flower bed, with a prehistoric cactus as an extension of the patio of the house, perhaps a remnant of the time when people shared conversations with neighbors and passers-by, with a coat and a T-shirt, with the teapot and the mate sitting in the straw chair.

Tell me which flower you grow and I'll tell you how you live.

Extensions of the private space into the no-place of the absurd city. Attempts to recover the human and unique dimension in the ocean of the others.

Treaty on the wide range of limits, ways to build, destroy, invade, take care of enclosures, ways of inhabiting the city, in constant dynamism.

Micro complex universes, the flower beds are also residual spaces. Unnoticed edges between the supposedly real city, and a bounded nature, vibrant point in the eternal imminence of returning to its origin and again, encompass everything.

Rita Simoni, 2013