In summer 2013, I was invited to take advantage of the August closing period of the Art Gallery “Art Window” in downtown Barcelona (Spain), in the famous art scene of Concell de Cent, to work on a site-specific art installation.
The project showed the strange cohabitation between local Catalan people and tourists in a satirical way.
Nowadays, tourists are a big “issue” in Barcleona; in fact, after the Olympic games the number of tourists visiting the Condal city increased exponentially as much as demonstrations and complaints by its citizens.
I wanted to show in a funny way this dualism between a population, the Catalans, made of quiet and introverted people VS. tourist coming from everywhere, of any age and of any social level.
I created my artwork with a couple of murals and a sound installation.
I played with the architecture of the gallery, small and narrow to face on the two main walls, on one side a couple of classic tourists with hats and sunglasses, and on the other, a classic couple of lazy Spanish/Catalan workers…. resting and looking at girls.
The funny thing was that during the two weeks I was working on the piece, both local and tourists had fun watching and taking pictures of me in action!
MURALS
The strange cohabitation - Art Window Gallery Barcelona (Spain), 2013
The sound installation made in collaboration with Andrea Dedomenico, is a study of noises of the city of Barcelona during a typical day, from the dawn till late at night. I mixed specific sound of the city, coming from tourists and citizens.
I want to thank to Art Window Gallery and Juan Pi, its owner, for the support.
Hereby, you can see a stop motion of the murals’ creation.