'Mud. Hybrid identities' by Maria Camila Sanjinés.

From October 20 to January 28, 2024, Open Room 3 of the Museu de la Garrotxa presents Mud. Hybrid identities by Maria Camila Sanjinés.

Fang is a research project that focuses on the theme of uprooting and migration, craftsmanship, knowledge of material culture and how these themes are reflected in his ceramic work. This exhibition is the result of workshops held with migrant women from the city of Olot. Based on these meetings, the artist collected the information from which he produced a series of ceramic pieces that synthesized and embodied the topics discussed.

The first phase of Fang took place in Colombia during the pandemic, in the town of Ràquira (in the Muisca language Ra: means Pot, Quira: means village), a place of potters with more than 8 thousand years of tradition. The result of this exchange has been exhibited in different cycles of contemporary art and was the winner of the grant for artists and artisans from the Department of Culture of Colombia. The second stage of the project was generated in the Rif mountains with the cultural space L'apartment 22 in Rabat, where Maria Camila was working for 15 days with traditional Amazigh potters. During this process he generated a series of pieces that talk about community and female constellations. Olot's is the third phase of the project.

The exhibition also wants to be a meeting place for different groups to talk about the construction of culture and identity. Maria Camila Sanjinés starts from the question: how are cultural elements created? And of ideas such as understanding a place is a mixed reality, as the earth is alive, mutates and changes and that we ourselves can be a hybrid that can generate new cultural languages without having to give up or reject anything. And that there are ways to create a hybrid identity between belonging and uprooting.

As a result of these meetings and the information and themes that have emerged, Sanjines has created the series of ceramic pieces that make up the exhibition. The exhibition shows both the artistic result of Sanjines and the process of working with the group of migrant women. In addition, it is also conceived as a meeting place to talk about the construction of culture and identity. When shaping the clay, Sanjines has questioned how cultural elements are created. The pieces want to show that understanding a place is "a constant mix", that the earth "is alive, mutates and changes" and that "we ourselves can be a hybridization that can generate new cultural languages without having to give up anything or reject -ho".