Throughout her career, Cristina Lamas has adopted travel and immersion in diverse realities as fundamental strategies for her creative process, in an aesthetic and formal search that involves a deep investigation of the social, historical and political contexts of the places visited. Thus, each new territory becomes a starting point for the construction of unique visual narratives, where drawing acts as a tool of connection between the outer and inner world, exploring the relations between place and individual in memory. In her most recent projects, Cristina Lamas's artistic production has focused on exhibitions such as Marginália P21 (2019), Pororoca (2023) and Extinção (2024), all closely linked to processes of deep engagement with Amazonian realities. The artist travelled regularly to the Amazon biome, spending months in countries such as Brazil, Peru and Colombia. This direct contact with the territories allows her to absorb the social, cultural and environmental dynamics, while developing a sustained practice that integrates research, investigation and artistic residencies. This same plural and interdisciplinary outlook, which has guided her artistic practice, led the artist to Algeria in the development of this project. Sahara Malaise investigates the regions affected by human intervention in the Algerian Sahara. The title evokes the concept of malaise (unease), which in this context acquires a complex meaning, as it involves the power relations and historical tensions of the territory. The choice of the desert and, in particular, of the Reggane region was determined by the legacy of the nuclear tests in the 1960s 1 , this geography brings to the surface the destruction and contamination caused by those tests. Through the metaphor of the Sahara, the project does not limit itself to addressing the desert as a geographical space, but also as a symbol of the vulnerability of ecosystems in the face of human intervention. Malaise transcends superficial unease, encompassing psychological, social, cultural and environmental dimensions that still resonate in post-colonial structures. Although the desert is generally seen as a place of aridity, Sahara Malaise proposes a more complex vision, highlighting the resilience of life in this dynamic ecosystem, where flora, fauna and human communities, adapted to the scarcity of resources, maintain a deep and continuous relationship with the land.
Using a diversity of media, such as drawing, textiles, photography, installation, ceramics and glass, the artist proposes a critical investigation into current global challenges, inviting us to reconsider our relationship with the planet and with the issues that run through it. 1 On the morning of February 13, 1960, France tested its first nuclear bomb, called 'Gerboise Bleue' (Blue Jerboa), in the Tanezrouft area of the Algerian Sahara, south of Reggane. 'Gerboise Bleue' had an explosive yield of 70 kt, more than four times the power of 'Little Boy', the atomic bomb dropped by the USA on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.