May 26, 2023.
Action. Aielo de Malferit.
The four banners refer to the municipal campaign posters for the 2023 elections in Aielo de Malferit. In them, the candidate has been eliminated, the elements of each poster have been represented in a synthetic form, and the word “Culture” has been added accompanied by questions.
Subsequently, the banners have been exposed accompanied by registration material of the action and a manifesto written by Lluci Juan that contextualizes it.
CULTURE?
In 2009 I decided to create El Taller de Arte in my hometown, Aielo de Malferit. At a time when fellow students were going abroad and it was time to start our working life in the middle of the economic crisis, I decided to start my career in this land: in a small town, outside the contemporary art circuit and a cultural offer based mainly on tradition, tradition understood most of the time as a suffocating excuse for any innovative initiative and that does not allow experimentation or dissent.
Culture is recognized by UNESCO as an essential good, and in 2021 the Spanish state established by law that culture is a basic good and a basic necessity. Theorists and cultural agents defend that culture will save us, a message that was especially popularized during the pandemic. Nowadays, the message that culture has to reach the whole territory is not denied -almost- by anyone. For our part, we artists have been organizing for years to defend our rights as cultural workers.
After enduring the censorship of own and other cultural projects, in recent years the town of Aielo de Malferit has returned to enjoy a plural and free cultural offer. In this atmosphere of optimism I prepare, hand in hand with the city council, the project Aielo de Malferit Valencian Cultural Capital 2022. The initiative was awarded and the Generalitat Valenciana granted 150,000 € to the consistory to carry out the cultural programming.
During that year they carried out many activities that turned this small town into the cultural epicenter of our territory. Some, however, remained on hold as a promise for the future.
I carried out this action on May 26, 2023, the last day of the campaign for the municipal elections. I reproduced in paint, in a synthetic way, the posters of all the candidates for mayor of the municipality. On them, simulating the typography used on the capital’s posters, I ask:
CULTURE?
How will culture be treated during the next legislature?