2018

Two light box, 66 x 50 cm each.
Edition of 3

Image “Welcome to Barcelona”: Pavilion of the Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas installed in the Parc de la Ciutadella in Barcelona, 1888.

Image “Welcome to Madrid”: Filipino “village” built for the General Exhibition of the Philippine Islands in the Retiro Park in Madrid and populated by indigenous people of different ethnicities and different animal species from the archipelago, 1887.

Welcome to Barcelona (2018) and Welcome to Madrid (2018) is welcoming to two cities in Spain, after two major expositions on the Philippines presented at the end of the 19th century. In 1887 the General Exposition of the Philippine Islands, promoted by the Overseas Ministry, took place in the Retiro Park in Madrid. In the general catalog the project was introduced explaining “Spain did not yet know what in foreign lands was the subject of study and praise”, despite being the metropolis after more than three hundred years of colonial rule. And he continued “The productions of that fertile soil, the works that reveal the privileged aptitude of their children for the arts all, the results of the influence of the metropolis in a colony never selfishly exploited, were known to us by references or fragmentary way.” (*) Good wishes were accompanied by a desire to show the strength of the domination of the archipelago, in a voracious propaganda attempt, just a decade before finally losing the colony. A year later, at the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888, the Pavilion of the General Company of Tobacco from the Philippines was presented, a company that represented one of the largest commercial interests overseas, founded by Marquis of Comillas, slave trader, businessman and shipping magnate.

This project reflects on the structural violence implicit in the political and economic strategies around colonialism, and on the phenomenon of universal expositions as a kind of vain cartographies conceived from the metropolis to exhibit countries and dominated cultures, as cabinets of curiosities and catalog of exoticism that did nothing but increase geographical and cultural distance. Under the pretext of scientific and anthropological interest, the positivist and suprematist gaze articulated around moral, racist, and economic interests was imposed. National stereotypes, images of power, institutional criticism or the euphemisms of progress are raised here through the displacement of the subject of contemplation: they are not images of the two host cities that welcome us, but are images of the vision that those two cities offered from the Philippines in the context of two great celebratory events.

Teresa Grandas
(Fragment of the text of the catalog of the exhibition Domènec. Not Here, Not Anywhere. Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila, 2019)

(*) Catalog of the General Exhibition of the Philippine Islands, Madrid, 1887.

* The 1/3 edition belongs to the collection of the Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila.

2018

Wood, Photo series.

Y la tierra será el paraíso (And the earth will be paradise), the title of this piece, is a verse from the most popular version in Spanish of the L’Internationale, the anthem of the working class par excellence, adopted by most of the socialist parties , communists and anarchists of the world. This verse perfectly sums up the utopian character of modernity, a time in which the idea that everything good was about to arrive was spread.

The project I “And the earth will be paradise” (2018) consists of a photographic series and wooden models that, stacked on top of each other, form a sculptural tower. These models represent the gigantic blocks of Social Housing Estate in La Mina, a neighborhood located on the outskirts of Barcelona that was built in the early seventies to rehouse the population from different shantytowns, and where the worst vices of impunity and political incompetence. Two archival photographs are shown next to these models; one, from 1970, shows the dictator Franco and the mayor of Barcelona posing next to the model of the La Mina neighborhood project, the other shows a group of women, relocated to this same neighborhood, holding the model of the their hut in Camp de la Bota, built by themselves with cardboard.

Again we see the image of power presenting itself in an overbearing manner as the benefactors of the population through large building campaigns, in front of the image of the victims of this power, the lowest classes of society, who appropriate the urban space making use of the few resources at their disposal.

The project is completed with a photographic series showing estates of large social housing buildings. Domènec, who has taken these snapshots in cities as diverse as Barcelona, Warsaw, Bratislava, Marseille, Nantes or Mexico City, does not indicate these origins. In this way, evidence of how the presence and aesthetics of this type of large housing projects, present on the outskirts of all major cities in the world, are a global sign of imposition from political and economic power.

Photos: Roberto Ruiz, courtesy of ADN Gallery, Barcelona