THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE WAS A PALMTREE

BOA ART SPACE, LISBON

November 2020

The archetypical paradisal garden symbolizes a sacred and safe space where you can suffer no harm. Where in strict intimacy with creation and oneself balance is restored. It reflects our fantasies of wholeness and preconscious innocence. However, in many languages the word garden means “enclosure”, bringing to mind mythical gardens, secret gardens, walled gardens. So when does the seclusion stop being regenerating, when does the isolation turn into loneliness, when do the walls become a prison? 

In the Garden of Eden this innocent bliss was disrupted through the introduction of knowledge, duality and the jarring responsibility of free will. Since then Gardens have been riddled with labyrinths for mankind. A sparkling fountain at the center ceased to be a symbol of freshness and the naturally ever flowing circle of life but turned into a deafening torrent of thoughts, doubts and fears. This ambiguity is what Hamer intends to capture and portray in this series of works: our fragile relationship between calmness and turmoil.