Mariona Moncunill, winner of the XXIV L'Escala International Spring Scholarship.

The artist, researcher and teacher Mariona Moncunill (Tarragona, 1984) has been chosen as the winner of the XXIV L'Escala International Spring Scholarship.

Moncunill proposes "a process of inquiry into the social construction of the landscape", based on the Casa dels Forestals in Sant Martí d'Empúries, where the winners of the Spring Scholarship are housed for three months in order to develop their project) and the environment of the coastal dune, Sant Martí d'Empúries and the whole of L'Escala. "I will make a historical, social and landscape exploration of different aspects and conceptions of the territory starting from the same building of the House of the Forest Service and the Hydrological-Forest Service that gave it its reason for being now more than a century ago.

The historical review of the process of fixing the dunes to which the workers who inhabited the Forest House were dedicated will allow me to bring out the evolution of the perception of the landscape, the territory or the ecosystems, including their most ideological aspects ", exposes the artist in his project, in which he plans to dedicate the first weeks to the collection of historical documentation, to talk to neighbors and institutions and to transform all this information into an artistic proposal that will have to be defined during the process. "I don't have a predefined format, but open doors to take any shape or direction, although I usually tend to video or documentary photography formats," says Moncunill.

The project The Hydrological-Forestry Service and the pursuit of the dune is in line with other recent projects by Mariona Moncunill, such as the desert of Tabernas as a film set (Malpaís, 2021), the historical-mythological stories about the landscape in the Vall de la Santa Creu (Jump down the cliff to save integrity, 2020), the cataloging of Trees of Local Interest and Singular Botanical Specimens by the City Council of Santa Margarida and the Monks and the Provincial Council of Barcelona respectively (AIL / EBS, 2018), the form of dissemination of scientific knowledge by the Helsinki Botanical Garden (Text on Snow on the Botanical Garden, 2013) or the recreational use of forests in a natural park and a park of outdoor adventures around Vilnius (Forest, Forest, 2013).

A graduate in Fine Arts, with a master's degree in Cultural Management and a doctorate in Information and Knowledge Society, Mariona Moncunill has won a dozen scholarships in different countries.

The jury of the 24th L'Escala International Spring Scholarship (formed by Cristina Masanés, Enric Tubert, Natàlia Chocarro, Ricard Planas and Eduard Bech) highlighted "the high level of the different projects presented and conclude that the four projects with the highest score have a high artistic quality and any of them could receive the Escala Spring Scholarship ". A total of 16 projects have been submitted this year.

This week, Moncunill began his three-month residency at the Casa dels Forestals in Sant Martí d'Empúries in order to develop his project and was received by the Mayor of L'Escala, Josep Bofill, and the Councilors for Promotion and Cultural Action, Rafel López, and Economic Promotion and Tourism, Marta Rodeja.