Casa de Henry D. Thoreau [House of Henry D. Thoreau] is an installation that recreates, with the greatest economy of means possible, the cabin of the writer, essayist, and poet Henry David Thoreau. This cabin, built by Thoreau himself on the shores of Walden Pond in 1845 in Concord, Massachusetts, was the place where he wrote his famous eponymous book.

The installation consists of a 1:1 scale architectural representation of the floor plan (3 × 4.5 m, ≈9.8 × 14.8 ft) and a full list of all the materials required. The reconstruction is based on available historical documents to achieve the highest possible fidelity, mainly Thoreau’s own accounts in his journals.

The piece reflects on the dialogue between memory and absence; the ghostly technology of writing, which in combination with imagination stores memory; and the poetic idea of creating a 1:1 scale map, initially proposed by Lewis Carroll in a short story, later revisited by Jorge Luis Borges, and used as a metaphor by Jean Baudrillard.

Curator Raquel Victoria ✦

The work was part of the collective exhibition Identidad en la Sala [Identity in the Room] (2021), "Sala Alta", Palace "Condes de Gabia", Granada.