Everything in this work comes from the grounds around it. Albergaria gathered branches, trunks, moss, leaves, soil and living plants from the abbey estate and assembled them into a small new ecosystem. Her starting point is the nurse log: a fallen tree that, as it slowly decomposes, becomes fertile ground for new life. The installation is partly embedded in the ground and connected by a path echoing the existing walkways. It keeps changing throughout the exhibition: moisture, fungi, insects, roots and moss continually reshape it. Time itself becomes one of the work’s materials. Albergaria invites you to see the abbey not as a fixed historical site, but as a living ecology, shaped by centuries of human care and by the autonomous dynamics of nature.

About the artist

Gabriela Albergaria lives and works between Lisbon and Brussels. Through drawing, sculpture, photography and site-responsive interventions, she explores the relationship between landscape, ecology and cultural memory. Trees, gardens and botanical migration are recurring subjects: she shows how natural environments are shaped by human histories of movement, control and care. She has exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennale (Pavilion of Portugal), the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, the Serralves Museum and MUSAC León, among others