GUIDED VISIT TO THE EXHIBITION

On July 14th at 12:30 p.m., Fabra i Coats: Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona organizes a guided visit by room staff to Cabanyal Archive. In Memory of the Place, the exhibition of the artists Patricia Gómez and María Jesús González.

The Cabanyal neighbourhood is a group of fishermen’s houses located about three kilometres east of Valencia’s old quarter. In 1993, Cabanyal was declared a Cultural Asset of Interest by the Generalitat Valenciana in recognition of its architectural and historical value but also its social value, given that the singularity of the houses favoured a culture of its own, with a life closely connected to the street and a strong sense of identity. According to property law, this meant creating a Special Protection Plan to guarantee its conservation but in 1998, just five years later, the Valencia City Council, then governed by the conservative party, PP, announced an urban redevelopment plan to create a boulevard, extending Avinguda Blasco Ibáñez by 800 metres so that it reached the sea. Reactions were not long in coming. People from the neighbourhood created the citizens’ platform Salvem el Cabanyal and a strong public opposition, led by cultural professionals and technical specialists in urban matters, denounced the destruction of the architectural heritage.

​At the height of the conflict, in 2005, the Salvem el Cabanyal platform called upon Patricia Gómez and María Jesús González. Between artistic intervention and heritage conservation, the work of the Valencian artists, who began their practice twenty-two years ago, consists of rescuing spaces immersed in processes of disappearance or abandonment. They achieve this through a distinct system of physical and documentary archiving based on the investigation of the context, analysis of the spaces and their photographic and audiovisual record, as well as on direct interventions on large walls that are transferred to canvas, using what they call “printing by detachment”, which stems from combining the principle of transfer, characteristic of printmaking and strappo in fresco restoration.​​

Trained in engraving and printing, Patricia Gómez and María Jesús González explore the physical possibilities of these traditional artistic practices, while contributing to expanding their meanings by linking art with architecture, urban planning, sociology, philosophy, anthropology and archaeology. With their peculiar methodology of ripping out facades, walls and floors, they have extracted the material and historical memory of abandoned homes, disused prisons, closed internment centers for foreigners, etc.

Please, register to this activity writing an email to activitats-centredart@bcn.cat.