Opening 20th of October at 19h30.
Exhibition from October 19th to November 19th.
Who builds the city? It is the initial question on which the project of the Colombian artist Juan Esteban Sandoval is developed. His artistic practice is centered in the public space, in the communities that live and pass through it, influencing its identity and nature; as well as in the work / craft that determines its form. The work is understood as a crucial issue to reflect on the human condition in the contemporary city.
The exhibition, with its various photographic works, addresses the theme of the city, the relationship between urban development and human work: how does the “new city” project fit the life projects of its inhabitants? The urban dimension is farther and farther away from the human, forgetting the corporeity in favor of an imposing and overwhelming physicality of the constructions. This fracture is the one that appears in the works of Sandoval, giving back room to the bodies and their efforts.
A first photographic series shows the faces of the workers who are superimposed on the planimetry of buildings, technical drawings that confuse the look. In other photos work gloves enlarged to human size, waste collected at construction sites in Colombia, almost like worn copies of hands, which shelter on the printed surface small blocks of cardboard, models of the urban fabric. Finally, portraits of workers from the series held in Barcelona, where the artist portrays migrants who have come to the city to lend their workforce. In the portraits they are tied behind their backs and heads with a chair, in which they carry terra cotta models that reproduce some of the great buildings of the city of Barcelona, backdrop of the own portraits; the images recall those that show the settlers transported on the backs of the South American natives.
Not only who builds the city? Also at what price?
Giulia Crisci
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This exhibition is part of DOCfield Barcelona
Documentary Photography Festival.
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