This exhibition will be found in dialogue with the City Room: LOCAL AND GLOBAL where the final part is dedicated to the city walls. Some are physical, they enclose and separate spaces and properties while serving as a space for political communication, commercial and artistic expression. Others are higher, symbolic and more invisible: they hide social inequality, poverty, marginality and loneliness.
Jaime Belda presents a map of memories and urban memories of the city of Valencia traversed by his contemporary photographic vision. Rafa was in front when Manuel Broseta was murdered on Blasco Ibáñez avenue. A person rushed to Manoli's side from the top of the Mandarín Hotel. . Lilian learned to irrigate the garden in Benimaclet. Paca witnessed the fall from a cudol truck that is now resting on Carrer Peset Aleixandre. We all have important memories linked to public spaces in the city. Some are part of our popular imagination, others shape our history, some define us at the territorial level and, of course, most of them narrate their own experience.
The work called Genius recovers some of these memories through the direct voice of its protagonists. The title of the work refers to the "spirit of the place" of the ancient Romans, to the sum of those experiences that make up who we are.
around 300 people have collaborated in the configuration of this map of the memory of the city of Valencia. A map where history overlaps, ethnography and everyday life without hierarchies. Belda's photograph, a view of the exact point of each reminder received, serves as support and tribute to each of the voices that make up this archive under construction that is enriched with each new testimony.
What we present in the room is only a small part selected from Jaume Belda's complete work that you can enjoy in his web site interactive.
