Shelters and Futures, when art and philanthropy come together
“The image often has more memory and more of the future than the being who looks at it... How can we give an account of the present of this experience, of the memory it summons, of the future that it compromises?” Georges Didi Huberman
On September 29, I had the honor of inaugurating, together with Enrique Cortés, Minister of Education of Spain in Mexico, Carmen Tagüeña, President of the Ateno Español de México and Virginia Roy, curator/curator, the exhibition Futures and Shelters. I started this project in February 2015 at the Casa Hogar de la Niña in Oaxaca. An orphanage that supports girls who do not have or cannot, for various reasons, live in the family. They do the great job of providing care, housing and education to “orphan” girls, so that they are given hope and resources so that their future is better than they would have if they were not under the support of this institution.
Shelters and Futures was born with the dream of being an artistic, but also a social project, in support of the Patronato Pro-Casa del Niño y la Niña de Oaxaca. The money raised from the sale of photographs is already being donated to this institution.
Since February 2016, it began to see the light of day, with a series of events that have given us a lot of joy: from its inauguration at the Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico, by the Minister Counselor of the Embassy, Mr. Emilio Vilanova and the Cultural Counselor, Mr. Carlos Ruiz, to the award received for the main image of the project - Real Toys - by the renowned Lensculture (Imagen Unica, Exposure Awards 2015), which brought the Girls of Oaxaca, through photography, to the international photography festival PhotoLondon in Sommerset House last May. Part of the project has also been seen at the Art Takes Manhattan Gallery, in Chelsea.
With great affection I share with you some of the images, as well as part of the text by the curator, Virgina Roy.
Since its creation, the photographic image has had a diffuse dimension of temporality. On the one hand, its natural connection with the past and with memory makes it a recurring element of the archive and memory. But at the same time, the fact of receiving it in the present obliges us to interpret, read and analyze it as a cultural product.
Shelters and Futures, by Alejandra López-Zaballa, refers us precisely to this temporary relationship. The series presents the girls from the Patronato Pro-casa del Niño y la Niña household house in Oaxaca, an underground social reality that the photographer brings to us. Lost in time, and in representation, his images transport us to a constant past and present, showing these spaces of play and memory.
The photographs cover the places, their daily chores, the games and the desires of these orphan girls, as a capture of the experience and of the time on the run. They are a chronicle of disappearances and recollections. Because, as Barthes advanced, the image has been but is being; it is still in a present that is being updated and that challenges us in an untimely manner.
Thus, López-Zaballa brings us closer to a social situation that is difficult to manifest and proposes this place of confluence where the subjects photographed are revealed. They are the others re-presented, those that we do not see and that these photographs make present to us. Whether they are individual portraits or group photographs, we reconstruct their experience through the narration and fragmentation of photographs.
It is well known that images do not constitute an objective reality, but rather that they propose an interpretation of it, a view and an intentionality. The choice of López-Zaballa is significant: in addressing the context of these girls, she confronts us with their stories and with their reality.
But, beyond the testimonial value or the complaint of a neglected social problem, the artist sensitizes us to it directly through affection and spontaneity. His images refer to abandonment and survival in orphanhood, delving into their routines and illusions. But also from the vindication of future expectations. As Victor Hugo says, the future has many names.
Alejandra López-Zaballa's photographs appear as a mirror, like an unfolding of the gaze where we see and are seen as a society. Their images prevent us from forgetting, and they directly confront our collective memory and consciousness. In these spaces of refuge, photography appears as an agent of visibility and a guarantor of the memory to be safeguarded. Thus, following Baudelaire, photography works to save “precious things whose shape is going to disappear and that ask for a place in the archives of our memory”
And I can only say: Thanks to these girls who teach me and give so much. Thanks to all the people who are helping them by buying art through which they receive resources that allow them to dream of a future whose name is better than the original.