THE QUEEN'S MEMORY  © 2001

The Queen's Memory, 2001
Cast aluminum
Variable measurements
Casino de la Reina Park, Madrid

The sculptural intervention The Queen's Memory rescues the historical past of the place where it is located, the Parque Casino de la Reina, built in honor of Queen Isabel de Braganza (1817), in the neighborhood of Lavapiés, Madrid. Formally, the sculptural work is divided into five areas of intervention, distributed in strategic points of the park, according to their significance. On the one hand, we have a series of footprints, made in cast aluminum, representing the steps of the Queen. These prints reflect different actions that Queen Isabel de Braganza could carry out in the park, such as: walking, dancing (sevillanas boleras), contemplation and rest. The four actions cover a wide spectrum of situations that the Queen carried out in these gardens in a sphere ranging from the public or social to the private and intimate, and invite the viewer to recreate these attitudes through the enjoyment of the actual garden.

The other area of intervention is located in the southern part of the park, in the so-called "cypress maze". Four trapezoidal strips, paved in concrete, serve as support for cast aluminum plates, about 12 cm. wide, which contain words and dates in negative.  The text includes a list of existing documents on the Casino de la Reina, in the Archivo de la Villa de Madrid (Archivo de Secretaría No. 27, folios 128-129).  In a seriation according to the structure of: YEAR, SECTION, LEGACY, NUMBER AND FOLIO, the history of the park is summarized in such a way that an interested viewer could reconstruct, through the different files and deeds, the past of the garden.

CREDITS ::

Conceptualization: Esther Pizarro
Production: Esther Pizarro
Architects: Beatriz Matos and Alberto Martínez Castillo
Contractor: Ortiz Construcciones y Proyectos
Developer: Madrid City Hall
Location: Parque Casino de la Reina, C. de Embajadores, 68, 28012 Madrid

Permanent intervention