“The history of a particular period never gives a full account of what happened, because there is not just one history, there are many, and the only ones that are really worthwhile are suppressed because they are usually either the histories of the weak or because they throw doubt on the veracity of official accounts”. These persuasive words of the artist Francesc Torres can be used to introduce his exhibition Dark Is The Room Where We Sleep, a conceptual artistic proposal, the form and contents of which turn on the need to recover our historical memory.

Committed to his time, for several decades the oeuvre of Francesc Torres has been linked to the collective consciousness. History, ideology, power, submission, war, the individual or the group, have to a large extent been the coordinates of his artistic project, in which the main form of expression has been the installation, as well as an extensive selection of writings. In fact, the ARTIUM exhibition consists of two installations: Memorial and the installation that has given the title to the exhibition Dark Is The Room Where We Sleep. Although the historical and geographical contexts of the two works differ greatly, they open the door to the universal reflection: Who does history belong to? Who is it written for?

Presented in 1992, just one year after the Gulf War, Memorial is the installation that opens exhibition. Left on deposit in the ARTIUM collection in 2006, the title and formal result of this work provide the first clues to its background, which can be interpreted as an attempt to awaken our awareness in the form of a commemorative domestic "monument". The image of the perennial flame of a burning Kuwaiti oil well highlights the democratic hypocrisy of the West and of its well-intentioned eagerness to safeguard the rights of others. Meanwhile, inside our homes we are passively bombarded - and anaesthetised - by the televised news of wars around the world. In the Gulf War, precisely, one of the greatest terrestrial offences since the Second World War, was to all intents and purposes the first conflict to be broadcast live on television. However, despite having slipped literally into our sitting-rooms, memory is weak and just a short time later, very few attached any importance to the victims of these wars.

Dark Is The Room Where We Sleep delves into a period which has always fascinated Torres, the Spanish Civil War, one of the most traumatic periods in the recent history of Spain. However, in this case, the interest lies in the history of the losers of this conflict, many of whom still lie in common graves awaiting the moment when they will be given a dignified burial.

To do this installation, Francesc Torres undertook a project in 2004 together with the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. This consisted of documenting and photographing the painful work involved in digging up a common grave in a wood in the province of Burgos, where lie the remains of 46 civilians who were executed in 1936.

The installation consists of several murals, an old clock and 29 photographs depicting different moments during the excavation. This visual diary includes photographs of members of the team and relatives of the victims, and features images that record the way the remains were returned to the family and hopeful, touching burial in the village cemetery, following decades of pain and humiliation.

As J. Bourke has declared, “those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are dead and silenced forever: preserve the truth about the past. We are the ones who must choose between forgetting and remembering". The exhibition of the work of Francesc Torres is without doubt an interesting conceptual and ascetic proposal, but it is, more than anything else, a fervent defence of the property rights of history.
Laura Fernández Orgaz

Produced:

With the collaboration of:

Dark Is The Room Where We Sleep. Francesc Torres
North Gallery, from May 9 to September 20, 2009.

Produced by ARTIUM (Vitoria-Gasteiz), with the collaboration of Vitoria-Gasteiz Town Hall and Ministry of Culture.
Activities: Talk by Francesc Torres, Friday May 8, 7 PM. Film season El balcón abierto. Documentos para la posguerra, from May 22 to June 7; a selection by Pablo Llorca. Debates on the Obscurity of memory, May 26 and 27. Free guided visits