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Dinosaur
Alien
Cemetery
Flower
Programing
Light
Pattern
Ghost
Universe
Paradise
Dogma
Purgatory
Glitch
Visiting Parque del Recuerdo Lurín, a cemetery in Peru...
In March 2023, during my first visit to Peru, I was traveling along the highway when a striking landscape caught my attention. In the distance, I began to see an expansive plain filled with vibrant flowers. The sight was so unusual that I felt an overwhelming urge to see it up close, but since I was traveling with others, I couldn't stop. It wasn’t just the abundance of flowers that intrigued me—what made it even more astonishing was that this area belonged to Lima’s desert region, an environment too harsh for flowers to thrive naturally.
In July 2023, I was fortunate enough to visit Peru again. This time, I was determined to go to the place I had missed before. I made time for it and finally arrived. As I walked inside, I was met with an endless stretch of lush green lawns. In front of each grave, bouquets were arranged in a uniform manner, as if reflecting humanity’s desire to regulate not just nature but even death itself. In a space where life continues to grow, the way death was memorialized seemed to follow strict order and discipline.
The unexpected revelation, however, was that most of the flowers I had assumed to be real were actually plastic. The artificial and geometrically structured landscape, which stood in stark contrast to nature, carried an irony that made it a compelling subject for artistic exploration. This experience led me to an intriguing question: How do humans spatially construct life and death? Here, nature had been standardized, geometrically arranged, and transformed into a new kind of landscape to commemorate those who had passed.
At the center of the cemetery stood a statue of Jesus. While honoring a divine presence, the statue also physically occupied an intermediary position between nature and humanity. The palm trees planted throughout the site appeared to be organic elements of nature, yet they were carefully spaced at fixed intervals. This seemed to illustrate humanity’s attempt to convert the inherent irregularity of nature into mathematical order. After all, isn’t mathematics the very tool we use to uncover the mysteries of the universe?
A cemetery is, by nature, a space dedicated to death. Yet, within it, human efforts to preserve and memorialize leave behind traces of life. Despite its meticulously structured layout and rigid arrangement, nature continues to persist, symbolizing permanence in its own way. Grass continues to grow, flowers wither, and the wind blows, introducing disorder into an otherwise controlled space. Within this human-constructed environment, nature asserts its autonomy, creating a constant tension between permanence and transience, order and irregularity.