Photographic exhibition and educational project in the Baró de Viver neighborhood of Barcelona.

The photographic exhibition, held in March 2024 as part of the Temps de Dona project of the Baró de Viver Civic Center, was born with the desire to claim that, for all women, every day is March 8, International Women’s Day. Day after day, women fight to occupy the space that belongs to us in a society that too often makes us invisible or belittles us. The protagonists of these images are people linked to the neighborhood who raise their voices, symbolically, on behalf of all the women of the world.

Conceptually inspired by Elsa Casanovas’ “Faena” and the work of Pina Bausch, I developed an investigation into the gesture and symbolic transformation of a single element to construct a collective portrait that reflects on female roles: from oppression to self-determination. The photographs show individual portraits of women dressed in black on a black background. Only a white tablecloth stands out, a domestic element that places us in the space where the condition of being a woman has historically been constructed. This tablecloth is transformed through gesture: it can represent the abused woman, the sexualized woman, the woman who cooks, or the woman who breaks away from roles and frees herself. Before the session, a selection of gestures was made and each participant chose one to represent. The body becomes symbolic territory: it can speak of domestication, violence, but also of strength, awareness and determination. Thus, the series proposes a visual journey that goes from imposition to liberation, and invites us to rethink which gestures we repeat, which we inherit and which we decide to transform.

Regarding the educational proposal, within the framework of the Aranyart projects of the civic center, two workshops have been held with 5th grade primary school children from the Baró de Viver School. In the first session, through play and performing arts dynamics, we explored the conceptualization of different words through the body. And in the second session we linked the content of the exhibition with the theme of paths, proposed by the school, with the aim of generating content in the educational center that will shape a final artistic piece.