Olga Olivera-Tabeni
 

The project Chromatographies of Memory explores the use of soil chromatography to identify possible human remains in Civil War mass graves.

Chromatography is a scientific technique used for soil analysis. Using samples collected in Priorat, and through techniques such as circular chromatography by Adri Bakker or capillary dynamolysis by Lili Kolisko, as well as multispectral software typically used to enhance the clarity of results, the project transforms soil into abstract visual patterns.

Soil portraits that, beyond their aseptic, analytical, and scientific appearance —typical of a laboratory— and the blood hospitals of Priorat in the rear of the Battle of the Ebro, narrate stories of life, death, and resistance in places like the l’Argentera tunnel. Here, Dr. Rafael Pulido Cuchí, the medical captain of Hospital Train No. 20, wrote and documented interventions performed on that train. The letters of brigadier John Cookson sent to his father, and the photographs of Alec Wainman, not without misfortune: Alzheimer’s, which affected both Wainman and his editor, condemned his work to long silence and oblivion.

Among these voices are also the photographs of Robert Capa, Endre Ernö, and Gerta Taro; and nurse Patience Darton at the Santa Lucía cave, who fell in love and married brigadier Robert Aaquist. Their romance lasted only a few months, as Aaquist died in his first week on the Ebro front. Darton never forgot her partner, and for this reason, she was cremated wrapped in the coat of her beloved.

 

This project has been made possible thanks to the Isabelle Meyer 2024 award, from Terra d'Art.