Urdaibai is a protected area known for its extraordinary natural wealth. Despite its appearance as an untouched landscape, human intervention has gradually reshaped it to suit its needs—through artificial canals, riverside agricultural developments, and even large-scale industrial constructions. In the early 20th century, this territory underwent major anthropogenic transformations: the course of the Oka River was artificially channeled, meanders were cut off, and its banks widened.
This mutable landscape is one to which Gema Intxausti (Gernika-Lumo, 1966) returns time and again. “I believe that territory defines each of us,” she says, “but… I feel more drawn to the idea of identity as something tied to movement—as if it were lighter. I identify with personal experiences that emerge untethered from a specific place or past. I wonder what it would mean—what it would look like—to imagine an identity without territory.”
To approach what might be considered the farthest place on Earth—one’s birthplace—she draws on narratives built from the layering of other voices and materials. These range from school notebooks from the 1940s found in an attic to evocative objects like the so-called Sudario de Nabarniz (Shroud of Nabarniz). Guided by a sensitive curiosity, she engages with items that once played a role in Basque seafaring rituals marking the passage between life and death. At the same time, these elements reflect the contradictions and extractive nature of a socio-economic system linked to shipbuilding and maritime trade. This eclectic array, as Xabier Arakistain observes, is what Intxausti brings into play on the board of resignification.
As Leire Vergara points out, when we approach these elements with questions about the past, the only way to receive answers is by paying close attention to their materiality—taking into account not only what is visible, but also what remains hidden at first glance, embedded in the textures of their components. Intxausti, too, seeks to reveal what lies not only on the surface, but on the reverse—the hidden face that involves the technical dimension of making.
In the words of Beatriz Herráez, the artist “seems determined to occupy her time quietly, applying a careful and persistent methodology.” Through the repeated gesture of automatic drawing—rendered almost as a mantra, where process takes precedence over project—Intxausti invites us into a new shared space. Here, the doodle (arguably the origin of any writing system) meets engraving and grammar, opening up a new political space to reimagine Urdaibai.