From “ERES BASURA” to “AWKWARDNESS HAPPENING”.

In 2020, just one year before I started my residency at Fabra i Coats, I took part as a student in an illustration course at CIFO (l'Hospitalet). It was a subsidised course, I was unemployed and I had always wanted to study illustration. So, I was motivated by the possibility of fulfilling this dream thanks to the Spanish Social Security system. The course was incredible and one of the exercises led to a subsequent project about what artistic talent, ecological practice and co-creation processes mean, which is called “ERES BASURA” (YOU ARE WASTE). I would like to begin the experience at IN RESiDENCE with this exercise, which was a response to a literary fable by Tomás de Iriarte (1782), and then explain how my drift has been so that we can begin a journey together. I think it might be efficient to start from an experience where I also acted from the role of a pupil.

From July, I have thought of starting a new project called “Awkwardness Happening”. This project aims to be a space to talk about moments in life when the feeling is one of strangeness, of not understanding what is happening or of not agreeing with what is happening. We will use different artistic languages (drawing, audio, video) to explore this ‘awkwardness’, sometimes with humour, sometimes with cruelty, care and the different cultural approaches to these moments.

Starting from an individual research for the creation of artistic materials, the idea is to propose them in workshops that approach the idea of a ‘happening’, where the participants become creators of the experience. For me, the project “ERES BASURA” is the origin of this new idea. So, starting with this exercise would allow us to move from a project already consolidated to a new approach. Moreover, adolescence is probably for many people one of the most uncomfortable times, so we could enjoy a workshop on this subject.