Exposición

The Spanish word ‘exposición’ can be translated as both (chemical) exposure and (art) exhibition. Exposición tells multiple stories about the true cost of perfect European strawberries. Sabin designed the exhibition as a space where the perspectives of strawberry pickers in Andalusia could intermingle with the visitor's own embodied experience.

In the centre of the exhibition space stood a greenhouse with an arched steel frame and translucent membrane. Visitors could enter the greenhouse to experience foggy air, a soundscape of blended field recordings, and soil under their feet. They could also walk around the installation and engage with wall-mounted photographs, activist posters, digital displays, research collages, and interview transcripts.

Exposición was designed to catalyse reflection on harsh working conditions. It draws on fieldwork in Huelva, Andalusia. Features of this landscape inspired how the exhibition was designed, from a ‘sea’ of plastic polytunnels to the largest radioactive waste deposits in Europe. The exhibition highlights how strawberry pickers, predominantly women from Morocco, are denied EU residency while bearing the burden of exposure to toxic conditions.

Exposición was supported by mLAB, a creative media space within the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern, as part of their residency programme in May 2022. Sabin collaborated with geographer Nora Komposch who investigates the reproductive health of agricultural labourers in Andalusia from a social science perspective; and Adrien Mestrot, Professor of soil science, whose laboratory team researches how pollutants including trace pesticides move through and transform (with/in) environments.

Exposición has featured in many peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings, including the following: 'Unsettling the chemical gaze' in Exchanges Journal (Sabin 2026); Bodies, Borders, Berry Fields (PhD thesis by Komposch 2024); 'Exhibiting toxicity: sprayed strawberries and geographies of hope' in Cultural geographies (Sabin, Komposch, and Mestrot 2024); 'The human and environmental cost of perfect strawberries' in Pesticide Action Network UK (Sabin 2024); Exposición in Artographies, published with Transcript (Winkel et al., 2024).