This video was possible thanks to the gracious cooperation of two gardeners of the National Palace of Queluz, Luís and António - their real names. They agreed to be filmed as they performed their daily tasks (pruning and cleaning the hedges, cutting out the deadwood, pulling out weeds).

The artist seeks to connect the viewer with the concept of gardening, in order to open the way to a reflection on the human need for setting up either oppositions or connections between civilization and nature, reason and emotion, the self and the Other.

The artist himself sporadically works at the National Palace of Queluz, and is paid under the fixed-term contract scheme. It has become a constant in his artistic practice to conceive art work out of the temporary jobs with which he earns his living. At a conceptual level, it is relevant that these creations not only should be produced at the workplace, but also in the working hours. By subverting basic situations that are utilitarian, functional and necessary in origin and producing artistic work out of it, the artist is also creating a utopian alternative, conquering a space of liberty.

This work offers two levels of readings. First, in a more immediate social and political dimension, it fosters a reflection on the labour market situation resulting of the prevailing neo liberal economic practices, conveyed by a small narrative originating in a plain workplace relationship established between two people. There is also an emotional perspective. The real provides the material for a narrative set somewhere in between this reality and a fiction originating in the artist’s own personal reality. It becomes impossible to tell the recorded real from the fiction produced by the autobiographical real.

This opens the way to a crossing of experiences, questions, and memories that are at the same time personal and collective. It also makes possible metaphorical allusions to other possible readings, namely those related to identity and sexual minorities.