© XAVIER RIBAS - Nomads (2008) 36 Pigment prints size 59 x 75.5 cm, text. Ed of 3
Installation of Concrete Geographies [Nomads], MACBA 2014 {Installation photograph: Marc Roig]
[En] On the 24th of February 2004 some sixty Gypsy families living in an empty industrial plot in Barcelona were evicted by corporate owners Necso-Acciona, by way of digging and lifting the concrete floor of the site, leaving behind a contorted surface, like a horizontal wall, to protect their property and keep it empty. To this day, the broken ground, the fissures and fragments of concrete slabs standing up like remnants of ancient Mayan stelae give testimony of this displacement.
----
[Cast] El 24 de febrero de 2004 la constructora Necso-Acciona expulsó a unas sesenta familias gitanas de un descampado de su propiedad en Barcelona. Durante varios días dos excavadoras rompieron y levantaron el suelo de hormigón del solar con la intención de intimidar a los gitanos y finalmente expulsarlos de allí, dejando detrás una superficie contorsionada, como un muro horizontal, para proteger el solar y mantenerlo vacío. El suelo roto, las grietas y los pedazos de hormigón levantados como fragmentos de estelas mayas dan testimonio todavía hoy de este desplazamiento.
© Xavier Ribas (2008)
+
PDF El Mundo, 23 Feb 2004
PDF El Mundo, 25 Feb 2004
---
---
Nomads (Part 1). Installation plan
Nomads (Part 2) 41º 25' 51.14" N - 2º 12' 7.30" E
Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost to history.
De todo lo que sucedió alguna vez, nada debe considerarse perdido para la historia.
[Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, Schocken 1969.
Spanish translation by Horacio Pons, taken from Michael Löwy, Walter Benjamin: Aviso de Incendio, FCE 2001]
Nomads (Part 3). Google Earth composite.
The site as it was on the 18th of August 2007 when the photographs for this work were taken.
A Handful of Dust, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017). Curated by David Campany
---
“El sueño de un paisaje justo está cada vez más lejos, como muestra bien el último trabajo de Xavier Ribas, un autor cada vez más interesado en la visualización de la violencia y sus condiciones. En Nómadas (2008), una instalación compuesta por 33 fotografías, Ribas reordena los restos de un solar levantado y destruido por sus propietarios para evitar que siguiera siendo ocupado por un grupo de gitanos de origen rumano. Aquí se registra un claro ejemplo paradójico de violencia controlada y legitimada, un daño significativo a la propiedad autoinfligido por sus dueños para garantizar el control del espacio. El paisaje que vemos en esta cuadrícula de 33 fotografías es la huella de una agresión, es la emanación de la destrucción como forma de autoridad, un paisaje que proviene de la pobreza y de la presencia amenazante del “otro”. La cuadrícula, como herramienta de montaje del indicio crítico que representa este solar en uno de los barrios de Barcelona, reúne los pedazos dispersos de una conciencia ausente."
[Alberto Martín, "Imágenes de la Violencia". Art & Co, Núm 4, 2008. Págs 14-15]
+
PDF [Cast]
"For Xavier Ribas photography is a medium belonging equally to many disciplines: documentary, anthropology, history, politics, social geography and art. His installation Nomads (2008) is a response to a very particular site in Barcelona. In 2004 around sixty gypsy families were pushed out of an empty industrial plot where they had settled, first by intimidation and then by the arrival of diggers that broke up the concrete surface to make it uninhabitable. Without secure finance or coherent plans to develop the site, it was left empty, suspended cynically between its past and an unknown future. Ribas’s first training was in technical drawing and very often his photographic projects show it. The chaotic forms of the site are made all the more striking by the diligent, quasi-forensic documentation and the geometry of his presentation. A formal grid of thirty-three black and white prints of the broken ground is flanked by a prosaic Google Earth view of the site and a ‘poetic’ diptych of storm clouds. Although its form is finely calculated, Nomads attempts no authoritative assessment of the situation, preferring to meet its audience half-way."
[David Campany, This Must be the Place, Jerwood Space exhibition publication, London 2010]
+
Related files
PDF ProjecteSD, Barcelona [En] [Cast] [Cat]
PDF Belfast Exposed, Belfast
PDF Jerwood Space, London
PDF Colin Darke, With Added Context. Source, Issue 61 p. 61 [En]
PDF Matt Packer's text for CONCRETA 01 [En] [Cast]
Adam Bell, Review lof the book Nomads, PhotoEye, 4th March 2013
David Campany, A Handful of Dust