Tuesday, 29 January 2013

Si

Either on road signs, gates, walls, on the road or on other surfaces, the warning signs allways forbid something and contain words like "no" and "forbidden". You almost can`t find any positive signs, optimistic in a certain way, that encourage you to do something.
The project "Yes" was about adding the written permision, next to the interdiction located on a rock on El Confital beach, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Written at the same hight with the same colours, Yes and No together, are now confusing for whoever is seeing them and asks himself which one to follow. Of course, with no other specification next to them, about what is permitted and what is allowed, the imagination of the viewer can be very vaste.


Before


After

El Confital, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Spray on rock, January 2013
Photo, courtesy of the artist

Nuestro equipo vencera!

In 2003, Estadio Insular, the stadium of Union Deportiva de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, was used for the last time, after 54 years of activity. Ever since, Estadio Insular had been repeatedly vandalized. Everything that used to be furniture, windows, tribunes, panels, had been destroyed. Most of the chairs had been removed. "Nuestro equipo vencera!" is about writing the local teams hymn on the chairs that are still in the tribune. One letter on each chair, like silent supporters, cheering it`s team on the long forgotten stadium.
What is really amazing is the fact that the text of the hymn, written one letter on each chair, fits exactly with the number of chairs left standing in the tribune...


 "Nuestro equipo vencera!" acrylic on plastic, Estadio Insular, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, January 2013
Photo, courtesy of the artist

Nails

One thing you cannot skip seeing when walking on the street in almost any Latin American village, are the knitting women, walking around, covered in the handmade things they make and sell. What you don`t see very often is how these women actually create their stuff.
One day, on the way back home, in a mexican village, I ran into a couple of women, sitting on the sidewalk, next to a wooden, electricity pole, with a nail in it, useing that nail for knitting. For a lot of people that nail was so unimportant that it passed completely unoticed. For the knitting women, on the other hand, it was an extremely important detail, that helped them go on with their work.
Within my project, every wooden pole on Diego de Masariegos, San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico got one nail. Most likely, the 12 nails added were never noticed by passers-by,  as the original nail, used by the knitting women.
Since the project was both about the women, but most of all, for them, I can only wonder if the knitting women noticed and used the nails I added.






"Nails", Photo on wood, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico, May 2012