Private Story
Barcelona Residency 2021
The context is a research residency program to which I was invited by The Over Art. The peculiarity of this residency is multi-pronged: it took place within the context of a lockdown in Barcelona. It happened to be located in a 4-star hotel temporarily closed due to lockdown. There were 64 rooms across six floors, a kitchen, a lobby, and a rooftop – all of which I had access to with a swipe of a card key. My makeshift studio and living space was located on the sixth floor – a step below the rooftop. The residency was a “carte blanche” in all sense of the word.
In thinking of my presence in Barcelona, I will be working with two phrases in mind: “Travelling bodies” and “A Story of distances”. These are also working titles for artistic works emanating from an itinerant reflection on bodies, borders and being human in the 21st century.If the 18th and 19th centuries were centuries of “Enlightenment”, they were also the century of alienation and dissonance. Thus, in careful optimism — as Toni Morrison calls it — the 21st century can be one of reparation, of connectedness, of multi-contextual spaces of intimate knowledge, of personal poetry and therefore inherent beauty. The kind of beauty which asserts and expresses itself in one’s agency. It can only move outward from the subjective towards the collective when animated by the trust in one’s process. For an elaborate version go this thought read: Facing The Mediterranean Sea
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