The Bitter Taste of Sweetness is a site-specific installation completed during Augustine Paredes's AlUla Artist Residency in 2022 and supported by the Royal Commission of AlUla in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Integral to the work is a first-person story about a farmer-labourer hired by a farm owner looking to tend to his trees and harvest their dates. This story, where realistic and fantastic notes are mixed, is accompanied by a collection of poetry written from three perspectives: the universe’s, the palm tree’s, and the farmer’s. Both are central elements of the zine published by the artist, and are also the common thread to the set of shimmering paintings that he presents in a crystalline pavilion in the palm grove of Mabiti AlUla.
The inside of Augustine Paredes’s pavilion is bathed in the sounds of his poems, transformed into electronic lullabies that he composed throughout the residency.
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