The tree that burns
Joshua Leon, curated by Daniela Ruiz Moreno
The tree that burns is an exhibition and education program by British-Austrian artist and writer Joshua Leon which plans to temporarily reopen the Experimental Institute for Olive Growing in Spoleto. The research institute houses a library as well as an archive of historic artifacts and scientific equipment relating to olive agriculture and olive oil production. Leon’s interventions – which will incorporate music, writing and installation – will explore the condition of the olive tree today and its witnessing of eco-social change through history. The project is curated by Daniela Ruiz Moreno and produced by the Mahler & LeWitt Studios.
A program of events organised by Leon, Ruiz Moreno at the Institute will explore the olive tree and olive oil production in terms of the current ecological crisis (drought, fire, and plague), economic pressures (labour shortages and inflation costs), and consider how the olive tree as a plant and the olive as a product have connected people through their poetic force and cultural value (theological and medicinal). The project considers olive trees as some of the oldest living witnesses to history.
Drawing on histories of migration and international relations, as well as the political-religious regulations that made the olive crop one of the most predominant of the region, the project considers the olive tree as a vehicle through which the eco-social transformations of the region can be traced.
Leon’s practice combines historical research with autobiography to reanimate archives and institutions and explore their relevance to contemporary society. He creates spaces of reflection, inviting visitors to dwell.
The project is being developed through a series of residencies at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios. Read more about their initial residencies in Spoleto here: Joshua Leon, Daniela Ruiz Moreno.
Joshua Leon is an artist and writer. He received his PhD from the Royal College of Art, London, UK in 2023. In his writing and exhibition making Leon employs a theory of collapse within a broader examination of the lament as a critical space; exploring how archival remembrance, historical research and memoir fall into each other. This approach examines the ways in which site, place and material bear witness, codify language and store personal and socio-historical memory. This methodical process is imagined through presentations of poetic discourse, display, and knowledge production. Leon’s works manifest fluidly through a multitude of forms including writing, silence, music, stained glass, walks, reading, garments, documents and institutional intervention and alteration. His first publication The Process, published by Mousse and Chisenhale Gallery, winner of the Emerging Art Foundation art writing prize, is the outcome of two years of writing and documenting his own research processes between 2022-2024, as he prepared for his first solo institutional exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery.
Daniela Ruiz Moreno (b.1991, Argentina) is an independent curator with a focus in participatory programmes and art education. Based between Madrid and Santander, she currently coordinates PRAXIS, an educational apparatus and structure for independent studies by the non–profit arts organisation fluent and has been part of the set up of TEJA, a network of cultural spaces in support of situations of emergency. She has curated Cuidadorxs Invisibles and El árbol que no plantamos aún as well as the online residency programme Together Apart of Fundación ‘ace para el Arte Contemporáneo in Argentina. Daniela also co-curated Suspension of Disbelief (2023) at TANK Shanghai and Embodied Interface (2021) sponsored by the Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation. Residencies: Delfina Foundation, Mahler & LeWitt Studios, demolición/construcción, Shanghai Curators Lab.