Aline de Laforcade

In Alquería, Aline de Laforcade constructs belonging through the gradual connection of separate woven elements. Its title refers to a small rural settlement or hamlet, shifting the idea of home beyond the individual dwelling towards a network of households, relationships and the land that surrounds them. Wool, jute and agave reinforce this connection materially: individual fibres and sections become part of a larger structure, each addition altering the whole it enters.

The work emerges from de Laforcade’s own experience of arriving and establishing a life in Ibiza, and from the distinction between simply inhabiting a place and becoming part of it. To reside somewhere does not automatically create belonging. That relationship develops through participation – through encounters with others, an understanding of the environment, shared experience and the gradual formation of ties to a community.

Within Negotiating Belonging, Alquería asks when a place we arrive in begins to become a place to which we belong. The work locates home not simply in property or permanence, but in the relationships that transform private residence into shared life. Like the woven structure itself, belonging is something constructed over time: individual histories enter an existing fabric, connect with it and, in doing so, inevitably change both themselves and the whole of which they become a part.