The river as body, archive and border

Aida Boix Grau · 11.10.2025 · Last update: 21.06.2026 · Project Body Ebro (La Entrega III) · Topics: boix grau, bonart, press, art magazine, body ebro, andrea pacheco

Marco Noris. L'Ebre (Miravet), 2022

Marco Noris. L’Ebre (Miravet), 2022.

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Aida Boix Grau’s article was published in Bonart (a digital art magazine that issues it in several languages) on 11 October 2025. This is the outlet’s English edition; the copy on this site is my personal archive.

Walking more than 1,200 kilometers in eighty-two days. Walking downstream along the course of the Ebro River from its source in Fontibre (Cantabria) to its mouth in the Ebro Delta, where the Baladre artist residency is located, managed by the Lo Pati Art Center.

This is the beginning of the Cos d’Ebre project, by the artist Marco Noris, curated by Andrea Pacheco, which can be seen at Lo Pati from September 6 to November 2, 2025. A multidisciplinary artistic project that explores the river as a body, archive, and border, focusing on concepts such as memory, climate change, territory, and depopulation.

The project combines disciplines such as installation, drawing, video, writing, and walking as an artistic practice. In Marco Noris’s work, walking is presented as a practice with profound symbolic and reflective meaning. Noris explores the idea that the act of moving through space is not only a physical movement, but also a gesture that implies a relationship between the body and the world. It becomes a sign of resistance and reflection.

The itinerary, in this context, is a way of asserting human presence in a world that is often experienced in a more disconnected and virtual way. It can also be understood as an act of conscience. It is not just a physical act, but a poetic, political, and artistic gesture, laden with meaning.

“Rivers are dynamic systems that accumulate layers of natural and cultural history, functioning as living archives where geological, ecological, and human narratives are sedimented. They are archives of memory, time, and landscape, both through their river sediments and the human communities that have grown up around them. Rivers are also an anthropogenic record; they accumulate plastics, chemicals, and waste, as well as poetic archives, made of myths and metaphors.” —Marco Noris.

Cos d’Ebre articulates a reflection on sustainability, understood as a complex experience that goes beyond ecology and connects with memory, culture, and the tensions of the territory. The exhibition will include parallel activities such as roundtables, workshops, presentations, and local activities to delve deeper into the project’s content and foster dialogue with the community.

With all this experience, Noris has arrived in Baladre, where, amidst rice fields about to be harvested and alongside the Ebro, he will begin the second phase of the project. A static phase, now without direction or movement. A moment of creation and introspection as the river flows toward the point where it joins the Mediterranean and its identity fades away.

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Body Ebro (La Entrega III)

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Marco Noris in El Temps · Wandering as art

Theme: press

Paratexts

The river as body, archive and border

Backlinks

Drifts

Marco Noris in El Temps · Wandering as art

The river as identity

The River

Cos d’Ebre Exhibition Catalogue, Lo Pati, 2025

Walking towards a deep humanity (Noris, Pacheco González, 2025)

The birth of otherness. Towards a littoralisation of borders (Reyna, 2025)

Between two waters (Martínez Vilalta, 2025)

Ebro Lands

Residency at Baladre, Balada (2025)

Body Ebro, traversal notes

Water Records

Accompanying a living being to the end

Words for a community archive (Reyna, 2025)

Arts and Culture Hour, Episode

Els Rius (Ràdio Nikosia, 2025)

Cos d’Ebre, una obra que amalgama tot el que és el riu (A Prop Ebre, 2025)

Ebro Community Archive

Body Ebro, the libidinal river (Zaera, Vilaweb, 2025)

Waiting

Els 80 dies de caminada de Fontibre al Delta (Canal 21 Ebre, 2025)

Lo Pati inaugura «Cos d’Ebre» (Canal TE, 2025)

«Walking is the most powerful and ancient act of memory» (Monclús, Surtdecasa, 2025)

Interview with Marco Noris and Celeste Reyna (Ràdio Móra d’Ebre, 2025)

«I started with snow and I’ve ended with fire» (Avinyó, Canal 21 Ebre, 2025)

Recórrer el riu Ebre a peu (Vericat, Canal 21 Ebre, 2025)

Body Ebro, day 68

Body Ebro, day 36

Body Ebro: interview on Radio Valdivielso

Marco Noris, caminar i pintar per a la unitat (Rúbies, Mangrana, 2024)

Meeting the authors of the Sequere project (Subirats, Institut Dertosa, 2022)

The Sequere project and the Tosquellian walks (Grup Pere Mata, 2022)

«Lloc, lluny, llar». The Grand Tour 2020 chronicle (Garí, Núvol, 2021)

«Lloc, lluny, llar» on Núvol

Marco Noris, un artista que cerca el seu propi enfocament (DiS – Diari Segre, 2020)

Les muntanyes: els cims d’una vida (Català, DiS – Diari Segre, 2020)

The mountain — and my work — in the DiS supplement of the Segre (November 2020)

«La Entrega» in Guillem Serra’s article (Ara, 2018)

«La Entrega» in Guillem Serra’s article (Ara newspaper)

Marco Noris, pintor de fronteres (Farrera, Diari Jornada, 2018)

Interview in the Diari Jornada about «On the Border»

Dues mirades a la frontera (Crowder, Diari de Girona, 2018)

«Dues mirades a la frontera» — Dominical del Diari de Girona

«On the Border» on Pantalles (Betevé, 2018)

Marco Noris, the painting of cruelty (Barcelona Cultura, 2017)