It takes a certain kind of artist to approach a municipality for six cubic metres of human faeces for an installation, or to painstakingly recreate an agriculture museum in their apartment as a critique, or to divide their time between some of the most respected art institutions in the world and the rural farming communities of Cairo, Spain and the Arab world. Asunción Molinos Gordo is that artist. Crucially, though, she is first a researcher by trade and a part of the farming community.

The Spanish artist's art is unfailingly political, bringing issues of food and water democracy into the mainstream. She highlights progress and innovation in rural communities, seeing farmers as creators of technology and keepers of culture.

When you take subjects like rural culture and peasantry that are stigmatised or seen as dull, and you dress [them] up with contemporary art, suddenly people can read the value and see it as something interesting and not obsolete. – Asunción Molinos Gordo

Jameel Arts Centre in the United Arab Emirates celebrates Gordo’s practice and impact with a survey exhibition, The Peasant, the Scholar and the Engineer, displaying some of her most prominent works from the last 15 years. Many of her site-specific, large-scale installations are on view in Dubai, like Al-Mat’am Elli Mish Masri (The Non-Egyptian Restaurant) (2012) and WAM (World Agriculture Museum) (2010), which won her the Sharjah Biennial Prize in 2015.

As ‘sustainability’, ‘progress’ and ‘agronomics’ continue to gain traction as buzzwords, Gordo meets speculation and propaganda with hard research and centuries of knowledge from local collaborators. The contemporary artist joined STIR for a conversation on the exhibition, the value of ancient knowledge and the process of adapting her works for a new audience.

Srishti Ojha: How does time figure in your work? WAM (World Agriculture Museum) and As we used to both imagine a future using the language and aesthetics of the past. How does temporality also factor into the wider cultural narratives around ecological issues, which often predicate their argument on the future?

Asunción Molinos Gordo: One of the central concepts of my practice is ‘pensamiento campesino’, meaning peasant thinking or peasant philosophy. I try to highlight how many things—like technology and mindset—from our ancient worlds are extremely sophisticated, efficient and useful for the future. This travelling back and forth is essential.

I pick up the things that we are disposing of in the rush of progress. We are obsessed with moving forward, even though our idea of the future is based on a very naive and narrow understanding. I use the visuals, artefacts, materials and forms of storytelling from the past to talk about the future because I want them to still exist. I belong to a community of small farmers in Spain, and similarly, I want them to exist in the future, to not disappear chasing progress to who knows where.

Farmers share a sense of temporality where they think really long term—working on things that they might never see, but which the next generation will benefit from.

Srishti: What drew you to large-scale installations and the act of recreating places through art?

Asunción: I was trying to provide the viewer with a similar experience to the one I had when I first entered the Agricultural Museum of Cairo, which the work is inspired by. We placed naphthalene balls so there’s a smell when you enter the room, and there’s a soundtrack because you have these old and broken fans. You feel like you’re somewhere else and your body immediately changes. I wanted to create the feeling of sneaking into an old house as a kid, where you immediately become excited about what you’re going to find there.

The museum revolves around the impact of biotechnology and the different arguments and propaganda surrounding GMOs, which the data increasingly shows has created more problems than solutions. I wanted to create a curiosity towards GMOs and things happening in rural areas because to me, that is what is really shaping our world and it is not in the mainstream conversation.

Srishti: Could you talk about the process of adapting these site-specific works to a new space?

Asunción: Some artworks are easy because they are artefacts that don’t need much adaptation, like the calligraphy work. It has travelled to many places and the only adaptation it needs is to be translated from Arabic to a local language. But works like [Al-Mat’am Elli Mish Masri (The Non-Egyptian Restaurant)] are more difficult. I got many invitations to try to do a restaurant in a different city, like Vienna, for example. But in Vienna, the situation isn’t the same—the political struggle, the food production of the country is not the same. You have to protect some works because they can be diluted and then the political power is gone.

Al-Mat’am Elli Mish Masri [was exhibited] in November 2012 under the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo before the army took over again. With the newly democratically elected government, we were talking about how important food was, and the Ministry of Agriculture’s political agenda. The work was so specific to the conversations that were happening in the street at that time that I don’t think I can do this anywhere else.

I wanted to keep its specificity by adapting it as a document of the time and situation.

Srishti: Collaborating with locals is a central part of your practice. Could you talk about this a little more?

Asunción: Collaboration is a main part of my practice, in the making, but also in research. I always look out for the scholars, journalists, practitioners etc., who have been there before me. I also work from direct experiences and meetings in real life. Whether it is a scholar like Samir Amin, the poet Octavio Paz or the testimony of my neighbour, it has the same intensity and holds the same kind of value.

In building up the actual physical work, I work with collaborators most of the time because I don’t normally use the same medium—some projects are films, some are installations, ceramics or glasswork. I don’t normally have the expertise, so I involve the knowledge of people who have been working for much longer. For instance, I work with potters from the Manises region in Spain, which has a ceramic tradition that dates back to Islamic times.

Srishti: Could you talk about the process of using archival material and relics in your art? How do you acquire and reinterpret the pieces in ¡Cuánto río allá arriba! , for example?

Asunción: All the pieces in ¡Cuánto río allá arriba! except for one or two antiques, are newly produced by the potters from Manises, inspired by relics. I [looked] into the history and meaning of the icons [in the ceramics] because the values of the ancient world, like those relating to water, are encrypted within them. For example, a representation of water democracy could be an icon of an open irrigation system. These icons travelled via pottery throughout the Mediterranean at a time when it was a place of gathering. You find this iconography of water democracy shared between pieces from places like Turkey, Damascus and Syria.

In the end, I constructed these totems of water accessibility using these utensils and artefacts. Most of my decisions are informed by the research; there’s very little I leave to art. There are so many progressive ideas in these relics and old icons that could be very useful.

Srishti: Why is it important to you to work in so many different mediums and to be a multimedia artist?

Asunción: It’s because I am obsessed with the audience. I come from a small village, and most of my friends and my family members don't know much about art. They get upset when they go to museums and don't understand what they see. So it’s important for me to make things clear and for people to really get something out of what I’m doing. I chose the medium [after] thinking about the audience and the best way to make it accessible.

Sometimes, the works look like something else, like a museum or a restaurant. This camouflage technique turns the work into something that people don’t immediately know is an art project. Then, the fear of approaching contemporary art is much less and conversation can be more fluid.

Srishti: What strategies do you employ to encourage the spectator’s active engagement with your work’s thesis rather than simply viewing your work as an art object?

Asunción: I trust the symbolic power of the material. But I try to think about the visual culture of that audience and what they are accustomed to. I first showed the rammed-earth work in Valencia because when you walk there, you see many buildings built with rammed-earth. The soil and the earth are extremely important in the culture; they have three lives: they are used to grow food, for architecture and to make ceramics. So I knew the visuals would be familiar and have powerful connotations.

Srishti: How does being a researcher influence and coexist with your artistic practice?

Asunción: I don’t have an artist’s studio; it’s an office that could belong to anyone in a research department. When I get an invitation from an institution, I work similarly, but the outcome just takes a different shape. When it’s time for the production of the work, I outsource it and work in other spaces.

Both practices are equally important to me—one couldn’t exist without the other. I don’t really see myself as an artist because art isn’t a medium on its own for me. I respect many artists who are in love with a medium and push within it. But that’s not my interest. I am instrumentalising art to get the research out.

Srishti: What was it about visual art specifically which made you decide on it as the outlet for your research?

Asunción: I guess because I don’t think I know how to do anything else. It’s the tool I know how to use best and it’s very powerful. It allows me to reach places that other mediums can’t. I see myself as a contributor along with many other people who are fighting for farmers’ rights [through] activism, writing or science.

Contemporary art today is a powerful tool—it has the power to dress up its content. When you take subjects like rural culture and peasantry that are stigmatised or seen as dull, and you dress [them] up with contemporary art, suddenly people can read the value and see it as something interesting and not obsolete. 

Srishti: What are the challenges of working with subjects like human waste that may lack funding and audiences even in scientific fields, or opposing government-backed narratives around GMOs or seed IP?

Asunción: It’s very important to be in alignment with the institution hosting you. For example, with In Transit (Botany of a Journey), where we made a garden out of seeds grown in faecal matter, I couldn’t have done it with any other institution because Jameel Arts Centre is very respected and has a good relationship with the municipality of Dubai. We could actually access the biological material — the six cubic metres of faecal matter — which I couldn’t have done alone.

‘The Peasant, the Scholar and the Engineer’ will be on view from April 16 – September 28, 2025, at Jameel Art Centre in Dubai.