A Venta

A Venta is a photographic and sculptural project by David Catá, born after the sale of the house of his maternal grandparents in A Venta, San Cibrao (Lugo). Before handing over the keys, he walked through the rooms one last time taking measurements, photographs and notes with a single purpose: to rebuild to scale the bedroom of his grandparents, preserving the space where an essential part of his family history remained.

The work starts from a model built by hand with the exact measurements of that room: every wall, window and proportion faithfully reproduces the original. Over that bedroom, roots slowly grow and invade the interior; they stand for family roots, for what stays tied to us even when places disappear. Nature occupies the abandoned space without destroying it: it transforms it and keeps it alive.

Reducing the room to a model also changes the way we look at memory. Like memory itself, the house can no longer be walked through and becomes an object of contemplation. Photography documents that reconstruction and places the work between reality and evocation: it does not show the house that existed, but the need to rebuild what time has made disappear.