The project begins in the furthest plane of Las Meninas, where José Nieto appears at an open door — arriving, leaving, or perhaps only watching. That ambiguity became the starting point for a work that connects the artist with the territory, the body with its trace, and presence with what remains.
To make Corpus Terra, I used earth from Sa Pobla — agricultural earth, fertile, laden with life and memory — and mixed it with a drop of my own blood. From these two elemental materials I made an ink with which to print a human figure that is not a portrait but an imprint. The silhouette comes from a ritual action: I lay down on a sheet of paper of the same dimensions as Velázquez’s canvas (320.3 × 279.1 cm) and was covered with earth, as if for burial. That shadow, that void, becomes the centre of each of the five prints, made at 1:4 scale as a limited screenprint edition.
This work is not about portraiture but about passage, about the trace — about what fades and what stays. It is a presence no longer seen, yet without which nothing would have been possible.