“Generate a community dialogue with the desire to create new artistic languages, at a time when uncertainty has too much prominence in our lives.” With this premise, the artists Laida Aldaz and Martha Elijah have created two artistic projects with the support of Antarctic Culture Containerentity created in 2019 to promote social improvement through creativity.
This Friday at 7:00 p.m., the Antartika headquarters (Calle Mayor, 53) will host the presentation of the two creative processes carried out by Aldaz and Elía, under the title ‘Unlikely Encounters’. Last summer, Antartika launched the call for its first grants for artistic creation BOR-BORwhich was looking for artistic and creative projects that were developed in Navarra and that had as a reference situations of vulnerability generated by the pandemic.
Dancer, choreographer and multidisciplinary artist, Laida Aldaz will present ‘Hari’ (Thread), a “performance installation” project created from wool cobwebs, as well as red threads that unify people with each other and with objects. ‘Hari’ has several projects created by Laida Aldaz together with the photographer Adriana Sotelo.
“Our work began in abandoned spaces, creating giant woolen spider webs that stayed there and deteriorated with the space itself.”
One of these projects, ‘Shopping List’, made with shopping carts, won second prize at the 2010 Encounters in the Plastic Arts category. “The project was evolving, and the webs began to link objects with the space in which they were found.”
The next step was to consider what would happen if the red threads united people. As Aldaz explains, “the red thread represents that dependency or toxic relationship that we all have with someone, be it the couple, the friends or the family. It symbolizes everything that one wants to get rid of and cannot. Aldaz focuses his attention on objects, “that move people among themselves or that are moved by people”, as in ‘Hari’, which also revolves around the idea of finding oneself.
The movement will be present through three dancers: Marta Coronado, Lucia Burguete and Clarissa Costagliola; these last two, former students of La Faktoria Choreographic Center of Noain. “In the webs that link people, you have to try them with movement and see if they work.” As for the cobwebs that she has installed at the Antartika headquarters, Laida Aldaz has been adapting them to the characteristics of the space.
‘Hari’ is completed with the exhibition of various objects made in crochet. “I wanted to create my own crochet objects that would join real objects to create a two-dimensional or three-dimensional relationship,” he says.
URBAN FURNITURE TO OPEN UP TO OTHERS
Can what was lived during the pandemic resemble a migratory experience? This is the question from which the project started ‘Looking for what unites us’an initiative of the artist Martha Elijah which will materialize in a piece of street furniture designed to encourage encounters and relationships between different people. In collaboration with the SEI Association (Intercultural Socio-educational Service), Elía has tried to combine “the artistic, the urban and the social”.
The SEI is a service specialized in accompanying migratory grief and family reunification processes, with which Elía has collaborated since the beginning of the project, which started at the end of August 2021. “I wanted it to be a participatory projectwhich was open to the citizens of Pamplona”.
Two participatory phases were developed: some workshops around a map of Pamplona and some video-surveys in which people from Pamplona of different ages share the feelings experienced during the pandemic: sadness, loneliness, uncertainty… “I saw that a parallel could be created with the situation that migrants live in, who have to adapt to a new reality.” These surveys led him to confirm the following: “What really unites us is the desire to get together and relate to each other.”
This led him to devise “a final piece that would really unite us in the public space”, explains Elía. Specifically, he designed a circular bench two meters in diameter that can be occupied by between 4 and 6 people. “The concept of balance is very present in this piece,” he highlights. “I wanted to reflect the idea that there has to be a constant balance to adapt to each other,” he says. “The funny thing about this piece is that you can’t sit alone,” he explains. “Comfort comes with the balance that occurs between all the people who are sitting.”
‘Looking for what unites us’ will culminate with the installation of the piece in a public space in Pamplona, yet to be specified. In the simulation that he has carried out, Elía has located it on Paseo Sarasate. “After all the controversy that has been created at the political level around this space, I would like to wink at the need to create participatory spaces. When designing a space, I believe that all social agents should intervene: citizens, commerce…”, says Elía.
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