This work came about during an artist’s residency, at a time in the artist life marked by profound personal transformation; in the process, carving – the repetitive act of hollowing out the wood – emerged as a vital necessity rather than a formal intention.

The project invites reflection on emptiness through a simple act: carving wooden spoons. During this process, someone remarked on the precision of the gesture: it is only through this act of subtraction that the object can begin to contain, to nourish, to be filled with other things.

Mar de Luna explores this emptiness not as a negative absence, but as a necessary condition for hospitality. Only that which has been emptied possesses the capacity to welcome. María Zambrano writes in Claros del bosque: “Emptiness is the supreme form of hospitality.” Emptiness ceases to be understood as a lack and becomes a space of reception, openness and possibility.

The spoon represents the desire to reach out, to gather and to bring things inwards. It becomes a bridge between the outer emptiness and the inner emptiness. The carving process functions as a way of listening to the material and as a tangible record of time.

The piece subverts certain contemporary notions of value and productivity. In the face of haste and the constant demand for performance, it proposes a slow, repetitive and vulnerable pace: a form of resistance to haste, but also a way of regaining presence, awareness and the connection with oneself and with reality.

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Artwork included in the exhibition “Interdependencias”, Official Section of PHotoESPAÑA.