Elisa Cuesta’s (Soto del Barco, 1992) practice maintains a sustained focus on materials as vessels of knowledge about the territory. In Filtrar un mar [Filtering a Sea] (2022–2025) the premise is imagining the gradual disappearance of the mineral flows that sustain the Asturian steel industry. The cessation of noise, of smoke and of the movement of materials would give way to less visible metabolic processes.

To bring this hypothesis to life, Cuesta works with natural clays from Faro, Miranda and Alto del Praviano, alongside steelworks waste, iron ore, dunite and limestone: materials drawn from Asturias’ geological and industrial history. This research has resulted in twenty-eight unique ceramic filters suspended from custom-designed steel tripods. In the exhibition space, the pieces are activated by pouring in water clouded with industrial waste. Beneath them, a bed of cellulose collects and layers the process, producing what are known as stratograms: autonomous and incomplete cartographies that reveal the spectral presence of the toxic legacy in the area. What the water carries away; what the mud holds back.