A Bag, A Bit of Bark, A Leaf

“A Bag, A Bit of Bark, A Leaf” gathers voices, gestures, and memories, intertwining situated practices and oral knowledge linked to territory and care. Using walking as a methodology, I traced the figures of the Trementinaires: women who belonged to the valleys of the Pyrenees and traveled many kilometers carrying knowledge and medicinal herbs. They represent, among other things, how the boundaries between the “natural” and the “cultural” are blurred, defying the ontological separation between the two spheres. The work is materialized in metal cans, interpreting the containers carried by the Trementinaires. The cans contain oral and environmental fragments of research done in the valley of La Vansa i Tuixent. Shaped by the body and the journey, acquiring agency as carriers of memory, the objects invite reflections on care and the transmission of knowledge of forgotten trades. Resisting the simplification of these figures, the project recognizes their labour as a result of precarity while acknowledging their subversion of typical gender roles. Walking their routes today is not only an exercise of remembering but also a way of thinking through the body—an act that crosses boundaries of time and makes possible an exchange of experiences to tell other stories. The title A Bag, A Bit of Bark, A Leaf is inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin, who proposes that the first cultural instrument was a container that held knowledge and affection.