A function of transicions/transiciones/ transitions is to assert that citizenship is a relationship with the city that exceeds official documentation. Following the foundational work of Henri Lefebvre, Caroline Knowles and Edward Soja, I began from the understanding that cities are more than bricks and mortar, they are also constructed from the ephemeral – the movements, memories and relationships we create everyday. 4 My collaborators are living in exile in Spain and are at various stages of transition to life in Barcelona. Our art work is about the ways transition is enacted physically and symbolically through the spaces and places of Barcelona and to understand how buildings and places can help individuals make sense of change in sex, space and citizenship. Transicions/transiciones/transitions was as much about the collaborative process as it was about the end result on the walls and in display cases exhibited at Sala d’exposicions del Districte de Gràcia. I met the individuals who would become my collaborators with the assistance of Associació Catalana per a la Integració d’Homosexuals, Bisexuals i Transsexuals Immigrants (ACATHI), a non-profit, volunteer-run organisation in Barcelona that provides aid and information to LGBTQ people seeking refuge in Spain. My collaborators were from many different places in the world: Veronica, a transwoman from Columbia, had been living in Barcelona for thirteen years and hoped to receive her citizenship in 2014; Andrei, who is a gay man from Russia, arrived in Spain just six weeks prior to our introduction – he had to leave his home and job as a computer programmer so quickly he only had time to pack a single suitcase; Nohelia, a transwoman from Peru, is a personal trainer and party designer; Edgar, a gay man from Armenia, is a talented graphic designer; and Rubén, from Argentina and Uruguay, transitioned to Barcelona forty years ago – he still does not have Spanish citizenship. I met with each individual at least twice, in some cases three times. During the first meeting I took a picture of my collaborator’s hand on their passport and asked them to respond to the following question: What would you like to say to your country of origin? (Image 1) . At our second meeting I asked my collaborators to take me to a place in the city that is meaningful for them (Image 2) . There I took a second photograph of their hand resting on, or holding onto, a part of Barcelona and asked them to respond to a second question: What would you like to say to Barcelona? ( Image 3)
transicions/transiciones/ transitions, exhibited at Sala d’exposicions del Districte de Gràcia. images, from the top: 1 Andrei’s hand on his passport 2 Andrei reaching up to touch the fountain or Fuente del Parc de la Ciutadella 3 Rubén touching the foundation stone at the Temple of Augustus in Barcelona.
75
Thomas Strickland
4 Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Soja, Edward. Seeking Spatial Justice . Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Knowles, Caroline. ‘Cities On the Move: Navigating Urban Life’, City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action. 15 (2011):135-153.
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator