Artist Fernando García-Dory was awarded the 2016 AFIELD fellowship for his project INLAND, based in Spain. ¹

INLAND is an artistic project that started in 2009 and examines the role of territories, geopolitics, culture and identity in the relationship between the city and the countryside. During a first phase INLAND comprised an international conference, artistic production with 22 artists in the same number of villages across the country, as well as exhibitions and presentations across Spain. Today INLAND works as a para-institution to open space for land-based collaborations, economies and communities-of-practice. INLAND’s activities include: study groups; publications; training schools for shepherds, peasant leaders, and craftsmen; newly commissioned projects by artists and farmers; involvement in local politics; and solidarity networks. INLAND Europa publishes books, produces shows and makes cheese with traditional local techniques. It also advises as consultant for the European Union Commission on the use of art for rural development policies and is recovering an abandoned village for collective artistic and agricultural production. ²

INLAND is an imaginative, inquisitive, and practical method for relating to our environment relying on peasant and indigenous resistance while also appropriating institutional means.

Fernando García-Dory (Madrid, Spain, 1978) is an artist whose work engages specifically with the relationship between culture and nature, as manifested in multiple contexts, from landscape and the rural, to desires and expectations in relation to identity. Interested in the harmonic complexity of biological forms and processes, his work addresses connections and cooperation, from microorganisms to social systems, and from traditional art languages drawing to collaborative agro-ecological projects and actions. He studied Fine Arts and Rural Sociology, and is now preparing his PhD on Agroecology.He has developed projects and shown his work at Tensta Konsthalle, Van Abbe Museum, Reina Sofia Museum, dOCUMENTA 12 and Biennales of Gwangju, Istanbul and Athens.

For more info: fernandogarciadory.info and inland.org