When the pandemic arrived in Spain to change our lives, Yecla’s industry rose to the occasion, helping in every possible way to get ahead, for example, manufacturing masks in record time or providing beds for the makeshift hospital in Ifema (Madrid ) in the harshest moments of the coronavirus crisis. The festival [C]reaction! de Arte y Arquitectura Epímera de Yecla this weekend pays tribute to the actions of Yecla’s industry with different facilities and cultural activities. Specifically, since this event, six facilities called houses have been designed, located in different parts of the city center that address the pandemic from different perspectives. They are the Cage House, which recalls the first sensations of confinement; the Casa Artesana, made up of workbenches, which tells the history of the furniture industry in the municipality; the Undressed House, which evokes dreams and longings; the Industrial House and the Hospital House, which refer to the fight against Covid through the manufacture of medical supplies; and the Technology House, on furniture treated with passion, beyond ergonomics.
In this last house, located in the San Francisco Convent, you can enjoy the plastic exhibition ‘Provisionario’, created by the prestigious Yeclano artist Lidó Rico. A sequence of 42 tables, each inhabited by a different character – self-portraits of the artist. All of them dialogue in an intimate and self-absorbed way with objects of various kinds. The references to loneliness, to the construction of the mysterious universes that emerge from this dialogue, become the common thread of the work. Ángel Rocamora, designer of the event, defines the facilities as “impressive” by finding reflected in them “the hospital that, unfortunately, has been the last house of many people or the cage that our home became for weeks.” In addition, the event is “a reminder of the Furniture Fair, the oldest in Spain, which could not be held and still does not have a specific date.”
Juan Gabriel González Sandoval, Rafa Picó, Pedro García Ródenas, Verónica López, Cristina Martínez, Lidó Rico, the Audiovisual students of the IES J. Martínez Ruiz Azorín, María Soriano, Cristina Martínez, Clic Clac, Miguel Andrés, Laura Tortosa, Noelia García , Eduardo Pérez and Raúl Carrión are the artists who participate in the festival, which has workshops, a round table in its program – it can be consulted on the festivalcreaccion.com website – with the participation of Estudio MABA, Carlos Jiménez, Pablo Erroz, Jesús Nieto and Ángel Rocamora–, musical performances and the presentation of the Ephemeral Architectures, this Friday at 7.30 pm, by the students of the Master in Ephemeral Architecture and design of scenographic spaces –directed by Ángel Rocamora– from Instituto fortyydos , entity in charge of the design and cultural management of this event.
In addition, this Saturday at 7:00 p.m. you will be able to enjoy the installation-performance ‘Six colors of separation’. An allegation against homophobia, “especially institutional”, by the Yeclano artist Miguel Andrés. A piece that tells six fictional stories that are linked through the furniture. “From the homosexual lived inside the closet of a person from Yecla to the connections that lead us to the Arab countries, where homosexuality is condemned to the death penalty” to highlight that there is still a long way to go. Vindication and art put in value in 11,500 square meters and three days where it is shown that the powerful Yeclana furniture industry is also a source of artistic inspiration and solidarity.
Climate emergency
The wake-up call regarding the climatic situation has been the axis of action of the 11th edition of the Mucho Más Mayo Emerging Art Festival, held in Cartagena, which on this occasion invites to raise awareness about the deterioration of the environment and whose motto is ‘Before the collapse. Art and climate emergency ‘. Although the festival has officially come to an end, you can still wander through some of the exhibitions organized by the event.
One of them is the Jesús Segura exhibition ‘Uncanny Landscape’, which can be visited until June 28 at the El Batel Auditorium. The exhibition is made up of a selection of landscapes captured in photographs and ‘video performance’ made over the last two decades. Works that maintain the backbone of artistic actionism as an element of social activation in the face of the environment and anthropocentrism. ‘Uncanny’ is a term that appeals to the Freudian concept – in German ‘unheimlich’ – that explains how that which could be completely hidden can suddenly come to light and frighten us. The exhibition is open to the public, free of charge, from Monday to Saturday from 10:00 to 13:00.
On the other hand, the Palacio de Molina is hosting, until this Sunday, the essay film ‘It’s about time’, by the Dutch theorist and critic Mieke Bal. His work starts from reflections on time, now presented as a time of urgency. “Through the mythical figure of Cassandra, I tried to give form to the reflections on collective indifference to the imminent ecological disaster of the world,” explained the essayist during the presentation of her work, which is shown this Friday, from 10:00 to 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. with free admission. The teacher delved into her work during her visit to Cartagena talk ‘Urgency! A review of our conceptions of time ‘, available on the YouTube channel Cartagena Piensa.
Nostalgia, as well as concern for the state of the great salt lake, will flood the public visiting ‘Mar Menor. Family images. Common spaces’, an exhibition by the audiovisual creator and preserver of domestic cinema Salvi Vivancos, determined to make home recordings visible as cultural heritage, which can be viewed free of charge at the National Museum of Underwater Archeology (Arqua) until August 15, from 10:00 a.m. at 9:00 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday and from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Sundays and holidays. The exhibition shows a collection of domestic films that were filmed in family settings between 1950 and 1990 and that represent scenes from the collective memory of the Mar Menor: family encounters, children’s games, streets and landscapes, celebrations or customs.
The original materials –films filmed in 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm analog formats– have been recovered over almost ten years by the Memorias Celuloides project. The footage present in the exhibition make up an audiovisual installation where the recorded images and sounds are randomly combined to offer diverse interpretations.
Three suggestive invitations to take into account the past and the present, reflect and make decisions about what is happening around us at a time marked by the health crisis and its resulting uncertainty that has led us to look away from the climate crisis.
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