"I do care" Manuel Barbero, Chus García Fraile, Paula Anta, Ruth Quirce, Che Marchesi, Avelino Sala and PSJM
That art generates feelings is obvious, but that the feelings of an artist in a situation of inequality or injustice involve the creation of a work of art that will stir consciences and mobilize people to try to resolve these situations, is exceptional.
This is what the exhibition "Si me Importa" intends, which gives continuity to the previous "CuestionArte, agitARTE, mobilizARTE", that the NGO Oxfam Intermón and the gallery owner Blanca Soto will offer in the Barrio de las Letras, on days 16-17- and October 18.
Oxfam's “More and Better Help” project and gallery owner Blanca Soto have allowed various artists to travel to countries in Latin America, Asia or Africa where the NGO carries out cooperation programs and humanitarian action.
”The NGO criticizes that in Spain development cooperation programs have suffered a cut of 70 % since the beginning of the crisis, much higher than that registered in countries like Portugal or Greece. Development cooperation hardly affects the budget of our country but it does affect the lives of thousands of people”.
The aim of the exhibition is to bet on new languages of contemporary art "to demonstrate that cooperation works, that it is a public policy that changes and saves lives and that it has a human face".
The exhibition is touring the entire country but it is in the Barrio de las Letras, where all the artists who have collaborated meet for the first time, and all the works already completed: Manuel Barbero, Avelino Sala, Ruth Quirce, Paula Anta, Chus García Fraile, JE Marchesi and the PSJM collective.
Especially impressive are the pieces that Manuel Barbero has made after visiting Colombia: "Human Menu", "Displacements" and "The Tree of Threats".
"Human Menu" presents the marketing of human life in a country that has a regulation of 2005 in which it is specified how much is paid per kilo of guerrilla (dead or alive), as well as their weapons.
The Colombian government paid for the delivery of these people and weapons, but it gave rise to the so-called “false positives”, innocent civilians who were killed and handed over in military uniforms to collect rewards.
In "the tree of threats" a trunk holds sharp knives that cast their shadow on a real extortion text received by victims of disappearances, a piece with which the artist intends to reflect the yoke of constant coercion in a country where threats are met.
On the floor of one of the spaces that collaborate in this project, a huge Moroccan rug with the image of a woman raising her hands, made by Chus García Fraile, tries to open your eyes to what a "souvenir" hides.
These pieces that decorate the luxurious halls of the first world hide the problems of female discrimination, immigration or slave labor.
For his part, Avelino Sala shows in his photographs of roofs made of different types of material (canvas, plastic, sheet metal, wood) how in the Philippines a simple piece of canvas is sufficient shelter and protection in an environment ravaged by nature.
The artist Paula Anta presents a series of four photographs from Mauritania in which a cloud of sand hides a "painful reality" that cannot be seen but is there in different degrees.
Or the new piece by JE Marchesi, who traveled to Burundi and in a single sentence written with machetes, "Cooperation or Death" defines the project with equal parts plasticity and hardness.
NGOs tend to sin by always addressing the same public and in this project we intend to "break down those barriers and tell other people what is happening with these development policies".
That has been the reason for taking the exhibition to the street, to a neighbourhood, to a stage that breathes art, literature and culture, as well as being a leisure area aimed at a very varied audience. Thus, Oxfam intends to talk about cooperation with a language closest to this public: that of art.