Azucenas tigradas
2016
Drawing, performance, forum

Azucenas tigradas [Tiger Lilies] is a work-in-progress of long duration that the art collective Jeleton (Jesús Arpal and Gelen Alcántara) took as their starting point for their IN RESIDENCE project, launched within the framework of the exhibition season "Peu a fora. Expedicions i diàspores" [Foot Out. Expeditions and Diasporas] in Space 13 at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona. The activity revolved around a weekly session with a group of secondary pupils in the “Open Classroom” at IES Comas i Solà school in Barcelona over the 2015-2016 academic year.

Jeleton's residency involved a series of interests that the artists focus on in their projects (iconographic, musical, literary, etc., repertoires) and took the form of several different blocks in which the group of pupils played an active role. The result was a work programme organised around documentary and performative elements with a view to proposing self-learning practices on subjects ranging from drawing and dance to text and song. With starting points to discuss and structure different spheres of relations, such as adolescence, feminism and the political space, the work done with the group of pupils focused on the personal biography of each: from their bodily signs to the pressures (looking to the future) that they are subject to as minors and support for this age group's own gestures and languages. Examples that were used to illustrate this battlefield included the documentary Ciutat morta [Dead City], which provided a centre of interest for many of the pupils' in the first stage of the residency) and visits to the classroom by Yosjuan Piña, the feminist group “Aliats del Feminisme”, the visual artist Cova Macías and so on.

Accordingly, Azucenas tigradas, is the result of the work of a discussion group and the meeting of a community of teenagers in a space that combined laboratory, forum, catwalk, dancefloor, exhibition room and so on, in which resistance and reaffirmation with regard to such issues as age, origin and gender provided the driving force for the project, generating activity and debate.

Presentation of Azucenas tigradas [Tiger Lilies] at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona. Friday, June 10, at 6 pm
The presentation of Azucenas tigradas and the other works generated by the residency took place at the auditorium of the Miró Foundation at 6 pm on Miró Foundation. The presentation was led by Jesús Arpal and Gelen Alcántara, the two members of the Jeleton group, accompanied by pupils and in the presence of family, friends and part of the teaching staff at the school. The event was attended by representatives from ICUB and Barcelona Education Consortium, as well as by personalities from the world of culture. The presentation ended with a performance by the pupils, who played the part of “poster-people”.

Halfhouse, June 18, at 12 noon
Official opening of Història política de les flors 3: azucenas tigradas [Political History of Flowers Part 3: Tiger Lilies]

This presentation of the project introduced the fifteen-year-old members of the team whose autobiographical works are imbued with concerns about the heart, sex and politics. The drawings and texts presented in the exhibition were the result of the work of the Artists in Residence at Institut Josep Comas i Solà, where we invited the pupils to occupy a common place that had to do with art and one's own biography as a political space. Some of the exchanges were reflected in this production in exhibition format. 

Presentation of the project at the school
Prior to the presentation at the Miró Foundation, the residency was presented to other classes at the school. This was a way of getting some of the things that would finally define the project underway, giving form to some of the conversations and dialogues that emerged from this activity. Many of the group's schoolmates became interested in learning more about the project, and there were many different questions and answers.